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Loading... Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Timeby Bernard Wasserstein
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Barbarism and civilization have been inextricably intertwined in 20th-century Europe, says University of Chicago historian Wasserstein. Taking WWI as his starting point, Wasserstein details how some of history's greatest achievements (increased democracy, widespread wealth and longevity) have been accompanied by tremendous violence--two vicious world wars, government-instigated famine in the Soviet Union, genocide in the Balkans and terrorism in the name of Islam. Wasserstein focuses on politics and the economy, moving smoothly from Britain to Germany to Russia to Turkey and back, with a clear command of all the historical material. Cultural and gender issues receive occasional attention, as in his discussions of the status of women in the 1930s and 1960s. Wasserstein even takes his story up to the present, covering changes Muslim immigration has brought to the Continent. Wasserstein ends on a pessimistic note: while he sees greater tenderness toward the needy, he fears for the future in a post-Christian Europe without a moral compass and a vulgarized public discourse and aesthetics seen in an increasingly dumbed down pop culture of minimal standards and accomplishment. no reviews | add a review
The twentieth century in Europe witnessed some of the most brutish episodes in history. Yet it also saw incontestable improvements in the conditions of existence for most inhabitants of the continent - from rising living standards and dramatically increased life expectancy, to the virtualelimination of illiteracy, and the advance of women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals to greater equality of respect and opportunity.It was a century of barbarism and civilization, of cruelty and tenderness, of technological achievement and environmental spoliation, of imperial expansion and withdrawal, of authoritarian repression - and of individualism resurgent.Covering everything from war and politics to social, cultural, and economic change, Barbarism and Civilization is by turns grim, humorous, surprising, and enlightening: a window on the century we have left behind and the earliest years of its troubled successor. No library descriptions found. |
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