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Loading... Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century (2015)by John Higgs
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is a pretty accessible take on a pretty complex topic. The history of the 20th century is fascinating, and this book brings some very disparate elements together to illustrate some themes that end up being quite pervasive. Perhaps the one word that can be found through all chapters (each of which explores a Big Idea) is Individualism. The rise of the individual is what characterizes most of the developments of the 20th century, what has created the world we live in today (for better or for worse). Parts of this book are dreadfully pessimistic (though sadly realistic) but for the most part it is a celebration of the achievements of humankind. I only hope that in positioning ourselves so, we have not also doomed ourselves for inevitable catastrophe. ( ) Fascinating and frightening book. Ends on a slightly positive note but not enough to wipe out the Butterfly chapter on how the corporations get away with murder and cannot be touched legally, how they control governments and therefore climate change will never be addressed until it is too late and .......partner that with the current news and Trump`s actions and as a pessimist...the end of the world is coming is the feeling I finished with. This is an interesting book, but it is in no way a history of the Twentieth Century: it picks up a number of important themes and looks at them from a number of non-standard angles but it is a connected set of essays and lacks a great deal which would be required to make it "a history of the twentieth century" Just how non-standard may be judged by the fact that it cites Greg Hill (i.e. Malaclypse the Younger) on Emperor Norton and later on in the book drags in the I Ching's Breaking Apart pattern (23); although it contains no reference to giant yellow submarines or golden apples, it does include Illuminatus! in its bibliography. I would hand this to somebody who was starting out in modern history as a useful primer in themes to be on the lookout for in detailed study, but it told me little I didn't already know (aside from some interesting bits about the genesis of Super Mario). no reviews | add a review
"In Stranger Than We Can Imagine, John Higgs argues that before 1900, history seemed to make sense. We can understand innovations like electricity, agriculture and democracy. The twentieth century, in contrast, gave us relativity, cubism, quantum mechanics, the id, existentialism, Stalin, psychedelics, chaos mathematics, climate change and postmodernism. In order to understand such a disorienting barrage of unfamiliar and knotty ideas, Higgs shows us, we need to shift the framework of our interpretation and view these concepts within the context of a new kind of historical narrative. Instead of looking at it as another step forward in a stable path, we need to look at the twentieth century as a chaotic seismic shift, upending all linear narratives. Higgs invites us along as he journeys across a century "about which we know too much" in order to grant us a new perspective on it. He brings a refreshingly non-academic, eclectic and infectiously energetic approach to his subjects as well as a unique ability to explain how complex ideas connect and intersect-whether he's discussing Einstein's theories of relativity, the Beat poets' interest in Eastern thought or the bright spots and pitfalls of the American Dream"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)909.82History and Geography History World history 1800- 1900-1999, 20th centuryLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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