A bracing study that demonstrates how the drumbeat of doom became self-perpetuating.
Overy (Modern History/Univ. of Exeter; The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, 2004, etc.) chronicles the various forces of anxiety that gripped British society in the interwar period.
The author calls this era the “morbid age,” when the Great War had shattered the hopeful progression for civilization during the previous “rosy belle époque,” ushering in fears about impending catastrophe. Overy considers these gloomy forces in turn, from the physical evidence of human breakdown in the form of the war’s survivors—millions of men shell-shocked and psychologically damaged—to frightening predictions by social scientists and the growing appeal of eugenics, psychoanalysis and pacifism. Writers like Leonard Woolf rued the passing of the “ordered way of life” to be replaced by surges of “hatred, fear and self-preservation” after the war, and seminal jeremiads by H.G. Wells, Gilbert Murray, Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee announced a crisis of Western civilization. The capitalist system was doomed to decay, asserted intellectuals Beatrice and Sidney Webb, while Walter Greenwood’s sadly realistic working-class novel Love on the Dole (1933) captured the popular despair during hard economic times. Overy’s chapter “A Sickness in the Body” examines the work of early birth-control crusaders like Marie Stopes, whose aim was actually “race improvement” and discouragement of “reckless breeding” by the “unfit”—though Overy skirts the issue of anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, the fashionable new field of psychoanalysis was going to cure the ills of civilization, even though Freud’s prognosis was essentially pessimistic. As the fear of a new world crisis loomed, people wondered about the causes of war, peace activists tried to be heard and public sentiment fractured into “creed wars” represented by extreme factions such as Soviet communism and German National Socialism. Overy proves to be a fastidious researcher, and he creates an intriguing, albeit scholarly, narrative.
A bracing study that demonstrates how the drumbeat of doom became self-perpetuating.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02113-0
Page Count: 530
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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