1913
Subtitle: the year before the storm
By: Florian Illies ; translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside and Jamie Lee Searle
Contributors: Whiteside, Shaun, translator; Romanelli, Jamie Searle, translator
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9781612193519
Subjects: Civilization; Authors and artists; Anecdotes; Nineteen thirteen, A.D.; Modern History; Intellectual life; History
Other titles: Ninteen thirteen :
Work titles: 1913
Description: "It was the year Henry Ford first put a conveyer belt in his car factory, and the year Louis Armstrong first picked up a trumpet. It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract, and Coco Chanel and Prada opened their first dress shops. It was the year Proust began his opus, Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring, and the first Armory Show in New York introduced the world to Picasso and the world of abstract art. It was the year the recreational drug now known as ecstasy was invented. It was 1913, the year before the world plunged into the catastrophic darkness of World War I. In a witty yet moving narrative that progresses month by month through the year, and is interspersed with numerous photos and documentary artifacts (such as Kafka's love letters), Florian Illies ignores the conventions of the stodgy tome so common in 'one year' histories. Forefronting cultural matters as much as politics, he delivers a charming and riveting tale of a world full of hope and unlimited possibility, peopled with amazing characters and radical politics, bristling with new art and new technology, even as ominous storm clouds began to gather."--book jacket.
Notes: "First published in Germany titled 1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-266).