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Terrible Beauty: A Cultural History of the Twentieth Century

Peter Watson
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artistic movements of the twentieth century
Author_Peter Watson
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Category=NHB
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highly readable narrative
History of the twentieth century
ideas of the 20th century
literary movements of the twentieth century
philosophers of the twentieth century
Picasso's first paintings
Picasso’s first paintings
Proust
Salman Rushdie
scientific discoveries of the twentieth century
the gene
the quantum
the unconscious
writers of the twentieth century

Product details

  • ISBN 9781842124444
  • Weight: 1221g
  • Dimensions: 153 x 230mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Nov 2001
  • Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description

'Breathtakingly entertaining, endlessly instructive, irresistibly enjoyable' THE TIMES

'A tour de force ... breathtaking' SPECTATOR

'A magnificent achievement' LITERARY REVIEW

TERRIBLE BEAUTY presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris - the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative.

From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopaedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide.
About Peter Watson
Peter Watson was born in 1943 and educated at the universities of Durham, London and Rome. He was deputy editor of New Society and spent four years as part of the 'Insight' team of The Sunday Times. He was New York correspondent of The Times and has written for the Observer, The New York Times, Punch and The Spectator. He is the author of thirteen books and has presented several television programmes about the arts. Since 1998 he has been a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, at the University of Cambridge.

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