Fracture

Starred review from February 16, 2015
In the beginning of this thoughtful portrait of the interwar years, Blom (A Wicked Company) asks the central question that arose for so many everyday people: after the devastation of WWI, “What values were there left to live for?” Blom
is thorough in documenting the many attempts to answer this question, from the noble to the insidious to the tragic. He adeptly roams across topics and locations, including the early stirrings of fascism when the Italian poet D’Annunzio marched on Fiume; H.G. Wells’s scathing review of Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis; the sickening activism of American eugenics enthusiasts; the wonders of Magnitogorsk, the “Magnet City” built in the Urals; and the growing risk of totalitarian regimes, such as Mussolini’s, that pandered to the hopeless and the lost. Dread, paranoia, and anger pervade these stories, and Blom does not shy away from criticizing those who made matters worse, such as George Bernard Shaw, who proclaimed “there is no famine in the Ukraine” after a Soviet-chaperoned visit in the middle of the nightmarish Holodomor. Writing about postwar Vienna, Blom notes that “nobody felt at home,” but he could be writing about almost anyone in that era, and this well-written account brings a refreshing clarity to such uncertain times. Illus. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management.

February 1, 2015
Blom (A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment, 2010, etc.) undertakes a massive work explaining the changes that took place in the years between the world wars.The author explains how World War I didn't really end; it was halted by mutual exhaustion, with one side economically weaker, only to be picked up again 30 years later. Blom extends his work regarding the prewar years as he chronicles the world's disastrous move toward modernity. In the years 1914 to 1918, machines began to truly overpower humans, killing first the elite and then the workingmen, leaving a generation changed forever. Some readers may find it difficult to follow the myriad threads the author strings together, but most will admire his ability to compare and contrast such events as the industrial revolution in Russia and the 1929 stock market crash. The 1920s saw the rise of the automotive industry, the consumer economy and even advertising. It was a time when the new fashions of Coco Chanel reflected the physical and sexual freedoms of the flappers, but it was not to last. The lower classes no longer demeaned themselves serving the rich; they looked for less-restrictive, better-paying jobs in the new technologies. The market crash collapsed what little economic recovery had occurred, and Prohibition and immigration laws illuminated the American culture wars. Modernity continued to upset social structures, moral norms and long-held traditions. Optimism was replaced by pessimism; art and science polarized communities; and cultural propaganda and oppression were rampant. The inexorable rise of Nazism and Fascism offered a Messianic sense of something greater than the individual. A book to be absorbed, marveled at and admired for the wide range of research linking events and thoughts.

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March 1, 2015

Many scholars view World Wars I and II as one conflict with a peaceful interlude. In his follow-up to The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West 1900-1914, Blom argues that the 21 years separating the conflicts are more properly viewed as a continuation of the same war "by other means." By this, Blom intends that the early 20th century is a story of a great cultural clash between conservatism and modernism. The two world wars were brutal manifestations of that discord and the period in the middle was filled with relatively calm displays of that same conflict. Even so, these social tensions frequently exploded into violence across Europe and the United States during this time. Blom investigates some of the highlights of the era, such as the Russian Civil War, the rise of fascism, and the Great Depression, but he mostly looks at often neglected aspects of the age, such as the popularization of jazz, the Scopes Monkey Trial, and Europe's experimental artistic movements. VERDICT This historical account will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in cultural analysis.--Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL

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