Portland Public Library

Fractured times, culture and society in the twentieth century, Eric Hobsbawm

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

Fractured times

bibliography

854611668

Eric Hobsbawm

culture and society in the twentieth century

"Eric Hobsbawm, who passed away in 2012, was one of the most brilliant and original historians of our age. Through his work, he observed the great twentieth-century confrontation between bourgeois fin de siecle culture and myriad new movements and ideologies, from communism and extreme nationalism to Dadaism to the emergence of information technology. In Fractured Times, Hobsbawm, with characteristic verve, unpacks a century of cultural fragmentation. Hobsbawm examines the conditions that both created the flowering of the belle epoque and held the seeds of its disintegration: paternalistic capitalism, globalization, and the arrival of a mass consumer society. Passionate but never sentimental, he ranges freely across subjects as diverse as classical music, the fine arts, rock music, and sculpture. He records the passing of the golden age of the "free intellectual" and explores the lives of forgotten greats; analyzes the relationship between art and totalitarianism; and dissects phenomena as diverse as surrealism, art nouveau, the emancipation of women, and the myth of the American cowboy. Written with consummate imagination and skill, Fractured Times is the last book from one of our greatest modern-day thinkers."--, Provided by publisher

The predicament of "high culture" today. Where are the arts going? ; A century of cultural symbiosis ; Why hold festivals in the twenty-first century? ; Politics and culture in the new century -- The culture of the bourgeois world. Enlightenment and achievement : the emancipation of Jewish talent since 1800 ; The Jews and Germany ; Mitteleuropean destinies ; Culture and gender in European bourgeois society, 1870-1914 ; Art Nouveau ; The last days of mankind ; Heritage -- Uncertainties, science, religion. Worrying about the future ; Science : social function and world change ; Mandarin in a Phrygian cap : Joseph Needham ; The intellectuals : role, function, and paradox ; The prospect of public religion ; Art and revolution ; Art and power ; The Avant-garde fails -- From art to myth. Pop goes the artist : our exploding culture ; The American cowboy : an international myth?