Abstract
THIS is an extraordinarily stimulating and attractive book. It inclines a reviewer to write far more than his editor could possibly include; for every page either gives provocative pictures of leading figures in the past or else raises profound and eternal questions for discussion. The author sets out to give an “incomplete” but artistic presentation of the modern European world: to pick out, that is, those features in the modern world which he finds of most significance—especially of spiritual significance. He writes well and with enthusiasm. Among recent historical works noticed in these columns, the book most like this is Dr. Wingfield-Stratford's “History of British Civilisation”. What he does for England, Dr. Friedell has begun to do in this volume for Europe.
A Cultural History of the Modern Age: the Crisis of the European Soul from the Black Death to the World War.
Egon Friedell. Translated from the German by Charles Francis Atkinson. Vol. 1: Introduction. Book 1: Renaissance and Reformation, from the Black Death to the Thirty Years' War. Pp. ix + 353 + vii. (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.) 21s.
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M., F. A Cultural History of the Modern Age: the Crisis of the European Soul from the Black Death to the World War . Nature 127, 123 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127123a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127123a0
