What I have written is not quite a cultural history. Certainly it does not set out to enumerate and extol the most significant works of art produced in our century.
Modernity is about the acceleration of time, and also the dispersal of places.
The book starts by describing the modern panic about time. It goes on to identify a series of places which are citadels of modern society in its different phases. Vienna, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, New York, Tokyo. Since this journal is an Australian book review, it seems appropriate to confess that Conrad's book reminds me of nothing so much as a Xmas Pudding, and a Magic Xmas Pudding at that. It is full to bursting with coins and preserved fruit of information, it is heady with the brandy sauce of a singular intellect, and it is seemingly inexhaustible.