A Terrible Beauty: A History of the People and Ideas That Shaped the Modern World - Hardcover

Peter Watson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297840754 ISBN 13: 9780297840756

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000

Synopsis

Physical description; xiv, 847 p. ; 26 cm. Notes; Includes bibliographical references (p. 773-827) and index. Summary; All changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born Easter 1916, W B Yeats Terrible Beauty presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris - the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative. From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide. Subjects; History, Modern - 20th century. Intellectual life - History - 20th century. Biography - 20th century. Thought and thinking - History - 20th century. Civilization, Modern - 20th century. Philosophy, Modern - 20th century. History, Modern - 20th century. History of ideas, intellectual history. World history: from (c 1900 -). History / Social History. History / World. History, Modern ; 20th century ; Biography.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Watson was born in 1943 and educated at the universities of Durham, London and Rome. He was deputy editor of New Society and spent four years as part of the 'Insight' team of The Sunday Times. He was New York correspondent of The Times and has written for the Observer, The New York Times, Punch and The Spectator. He is the author of thirteen books and has presented several television programmes about the arts. Since 1998 he has been a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, at the University of Cambridge.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0297840754
• ISBN 13: 9780297840756
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 847