Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century - Softcover

Higgs, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593766262 ISBN 13: 9781593766269

Publisher: Soft Skull, 2015

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

John Higgs created the long-running BBC Radio 4 quiz show X Marks the Spot” and has directed BAFTA-winning episodes of animated pre-school British TV. He is the author of KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band that Burned a Million Pounds, I Have America Surrounded: A Biography of Timothy Leary and Our Pet Queen: A New Perspective on Monarchy.

Review:

"It was formerly held that a comprehensive history of the last century would never be written, by virtue of the fact that we knew too much about that frenetic and eventful period. Now, with the era's ink barely dry, John Higgs demolishes this assumption with a breathtakingly lucid and coherent map of the tectonic shifts which drastically reshaped the human psyche, and the human world, within a hundred thrilling, terrifying years ... An illuminating work of massive insight, in Stranger Than We Can Imagine, John Higgs informs us of exactly where we've been and, by extension, where we are. I cannot recommend this magnificent work too highly." —Alan Moore, author of V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and Lost Girls

"A beautiful, erudite, funny and enlightening tour of the widening boundaries of uncertainty revealed in the twentieth century, and who doesn't need a book that explains quantum behaviour with a boxing bout between Putin and a kangaroo?" Robin Ince

About this edition

• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1593766262
• ISBN 13: 9781593766269
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356