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The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Peter Watson

4.27 · Rating details · 667 ratings · 66 reviews

From Freud to Babbitt, from Animal Farm to Sartre to the Great Society, from the Theory of Relativity to counterculture to Kosovo, The Modern Mind is encyclopedic, covering the major writers, artists, scientists, and philosophers who produced the ideas by which we live. Peter Watson has produced a fluent and engaging narrative of the intellectual tradition of the twentieth ...more

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Paperback, 847 pages

Published July 23rd 2002 by Harper Perennial (first published 2001)

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Apr 10, 2013 Marc rated it it was ok

Shelves: history

What a whopper of a book (more than 800 pages)! After 20 pages I thought I never would reach the end: this is an encyclopedic accumulation of known persons that made the 20th Century. But still I continued reading and after 3 months of toil, I have to say: hats off to the erudition of Watson! Especially the last part is meritorious, because it creates order in the cultural production of the last decades of that century.

Remains the justified criticism that there is no real line in the story. ...more

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Nov 15, 2007 Todd N rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone remotely interested in thought in the 20th century

This is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. I am always curious about the history of ideas and how influential ideas can be so pervasive in our lives as to be almost invisible. This book starts with the discovery (and re-discovery in some instances) of the gene, quantum, and subconscious in 1900 and works its way through the century as people wrestle with Freud, Darwin, and Marx. Along the way, Watson identifies science, the free market, and mass media as the most important forces. ...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Loring Wirbel rated it it was amazing

One approaches a massive tome with big ambitions under the assumption that the author probably covered the territory rather well, but it's rare to find something as satisfying in multiple dimensions as 'The Modern Mind.' Jacket blurbs and some reviews suggest dipping into this work in encyclopedic fashion, in a manner similar to dabbling with 'The Autobiography of Mark Twain.' No way. The author is telling an important story of the 20th century, one that deserves a straightforward read, even if One approaches a massive tome with big ambitions under the assumption that the author probably covered the territory rather well, but it's rare to find something as satisfying in multiple dimensions as 'The Modern Mind.' Jacket blurbs and some reviews suggest dipping into this work in encyclopedic fashion, in a manner similar to dabbling with 'The Autobiography of Mark Twain.' No way. The author is telling an important story of the 20th century, one that deserves a straightforward read, even if such a read sounds daunting at 772 pages. When I give this five stars, it means five solid stars, one of the most fascinating nonfiction books I've ever read.

One of Watson's critical points is disclosed in the introduction. He charges the cultural-literati side of the intellectual elite with making itself obsolete by ignoring or at best passing over the achievements of science in the past century. In the conclusion, Watson expands upon this by saying the traditional philosophy and liberal-arts-studies intellectuals got so hung up with Marx and Freud, they forgot where the important work was coming from. When some in the 1990s complained there were no "public intellectuals" any longer, they didn't realize that this function was no longer served by the likes of Sartre and Daniel Bell, but by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Jay Gould. In essence, the liberal-arts vanguard ceded this space to the scientists.

But don't think that Watson gives literature or traditional philosophy short shrift in his review of the 20th century. He gives all dimensions of intellectual pursuits equal opportunity. And he covers the important literature coming out of Africa, India, and the Middle East. But in so doing, he comes to an important and critical conclusion. Watson and his editors went out of their way to be multicultural along several fronts, only to find that most scientific, literary, philosophical "new ideas" of the 20th century did indeed come out of the realm of "dead white guys" - the Western world. Watson gives fair shakes to everyone from Noam Chomsky to Edward Said who criticize this outlook, but he still comes to the conclusion that the Western nations increased their lead in new ideas during the last century. The biggest factor influencing this, Watson says, is the role of religious fundamentalism, or even open-minded traditionalism of the Hindu or Confucian variety. Where emotional attachment to traditional faith endures, he says, new ideas wither on the vine. This is particularly true of Islam since the 1970s, he says, which is a shame. You don't have to fully subscribe to Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' to realize that Islam has a problem with reinvention.

Watson's coverage of the early century and the post-WW1 period is exciting and refreshing, particularly in the way he looks to movements like Dada as deliberate infusions of primitivism into a culture that has been too hung up in its own self-examination. Watson does not go so far as to say barbarism is a nice antidote to too much classicism, though it's clear he likes the whimsical subversion of Dada, the Beats, situationism, punks, etc. Later in the book, he gently chides Allan Bloom for his book "Closing of the American Mind," for its assumption that rock music was a horrible dumb-downer for classical music, and that the cultural world of the Greeks and Romans represented a pinnacle that was never recovered. Watson doesn't poke direct fun of Bloom, but suggests he should hang out with the barbarians a little more.

For someone who thinks both Freud and Marx were stultifying time-wasters for the academic mainstream, Watson gives the psychoanalysts and class-analysts fair coverage throughout the book. He also gives existentialists and post-modernists proper due, though he clearly thinks they wasted a lot of time in the past century. Sometimes, Watson covers the likes of Hayek and Friedman enough to make one think he might be libertarian, though he makes clear in the conclusion that he is not a laissez-faire capitalist of the Austrian school. In that sense, my views are very close to Watson's. He says that Marx provided an interesting way of looking at inequality and exploitation, before Lenin and Stalin destroyed anything worthy in Marx's views. He says that Freud and Jung provided an interesting way of examining consciousness, though the 1990s studies of neural-networks and self-organizing sentience (not to mention the biochemical basis of mental disease), pretty much trashed most Freudian theory.

Watson provides a careful analysis of how modernist and post-modernist culture affected intellectual development in the last 40 years of the 20th century, without becoming one of those pessimistic hand-wringers who think television and the Internet have dumbed us down. His conclusion, 'The Positive Hour,' is downright optimistic in the face of the tough environmental and economic challenges our species faces in the 21st century. If the traditional cultural-literate academia would tone down the Foucault and Derrida a little bit and study their science and math, Watson suggests, we'd all be a little better off. In that sense, I could chide Watson for not covering enough 'science-centered fiction' among the authors that have done just what he suggested - Vonnegut, LeGuin,and Pynchon in the early years, followed by Stephenson, Gibson, Powers, Sterling, D.F. Wallace, etc. at century's end. If Watson would have covered a little more punk, cyberpunk, and future-nihilist literature-culture of the 1970s through 1990s, his conclusion might have been even more optimistic about our chances to continue our development as a species. The trick is to listen to the classicists a little less, and the barbarians a little more. I found myself so much in agreement with many of Watson's points, I almost hated to finish this marvelous, whimsical, and occasionally downright humorous review of intellectual pursuit.

...more

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Apr 29, 2014 Jan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, history-of-ideas, 21st-century

Did you ever see a 10-foot pointillism painting by Seurat and not recognize the picture until you stepped way back from the canvass? Did you ever assemble one of those tile mosaic kits and not know if you did it right until you backed away?

Peter Watson is an intellectual historian at Cambridge and he summarized the works of the leading minds of the past century and tries to piece together a coherent narrative of the past century.

These fragments became part of a mosaic in his hands.
This is a ...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Philipp rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

It took me what, 7 months to read this book? It's a massive book trying to summarize the history of knowledge in the 20th century, ending with the rise of "pop-science-books" and starting with

The history of the 20th century is not easy and as such, this book is not really "bed-lecture" to be easily digested: it's not uncommon that the authors throws ten names at you in one paragraph. Sometimes the ideas are hard to comprehend, but Watson always does a good job to explain everything in laymen's ...more

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Oct 31, 2008 Jon rated it really liked it

This book serves two purposes. First, it provides a meta-narrative of 20th-century intellectual history that ties together the scientific, artistic, and socioeconomic trends of the last 100 years into an overarching story of increasing individualism and alienation. On that count, it satisfyingly explains over the course of 800 small-print pages what countless other authors have explored in-depth in 200 or 300 pages. Second, it gives the reader a jumping-off point for literally hundreds of ...more

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Oct 03, 2018 Jafar Isbarov rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-english, philosophy, politics, history, science

20th century was...huge. It bore the most children ever; it killed the most soldiers ever. It wrote the most words ever; it burnt the most books ever. It unearthed the most history ever; it brushed aside the most traditions ever. Studying it, in proper sense of the word, is an ideal to strive for only if it is understood to be out of reach.

Few books make me feel as indebted to the author. The amount of dedication and hard work put into this years-long project is daunting; even more so, once you ...more

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Sep 14, 2008 Manderson rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

This compendium of modern thought and intellectual achievement is a remarkably breezy read, given that it could just as easily have been a dry and nauseating regurgitation of lists and names. Watson strings a tight narrative out of the history of modern man, providing a compelling perspective of the evolution in arts, sciences, and providing both caution and hope for future human achievement. Watson delves not only into humanity's heights of innovation, but also the stark and abject failures of ...more

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Sep 06, 2009 Ed rated it it was amazing

Brilliant comprehensive and balanced intellectual history of the 20th century that complements his other volume that covers from the beginning to 1900: From Fire to Freud.

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Jun 21, 2014 Tso William rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, non-fiction, intellectual-history

Reading this book is like having a buffet. There is so many brilliant ideas to consume that you felt you are over-feeding yourself without knowing it.

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This article reviews two masterpieces of intellectual history: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (by Jacques Barzun) and The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century (by Peter Watson)

...more

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Nov 29, 2018 Stone rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourite, ideas

I am actually grateful that someone on this very planet has actually taken the time and effort to read and review all these important works and ideas, and collected, organised, compared then summarised them here in this book. This book has its unequalled weight and might not because it has made any major breakthrough in some areas that blew people's mind, but because it has critically looked at other contributions in a scientific, historical and philosophical way, comprehensively.

What I read ...more

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Jul 03, 2019 Kim Marshall rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, history, religion, psychology, philosophy, science, sociology, politics

This is a massive tome and an amazing achievement by it's author Peter Watson. It took me some weeks to devour it but the effort was rewarding. I must admit to being somewhat miffed that Watson has not gone back and added an addendum that would bring the book a bit up to date. In particular I miss a discussion of 9-11 or more the recent advent of science's ability to measure gravitational waves. Then of course there is the impact of cell-phones and social media on our lives and much more. But This is a massive tome and an amazing achievement by it's author Peter Watson. It took me some weeks to devour it but the effort was rewarding. I must admit to being somewhat miffed that Watson has not gone back and added an addendum that would bring the book a bit up to date. In particular I miss a discussion of 9-11 or more the recent advent of science's ability to measure gravitational waves. Then of course there is the impact of cell-phones and social media on our lives and much more. But the book is, after all, about the 20th century and these do belong properly to the 21st. Still I miss them!

Being a scientist myself I must admit to be particularly pleased with Watson's rather through treatment of this subject in the past century. Still overall I came away from this reading with a bit of a hopeless feeling. This feeling is caused by the realization that though much has changed since 1900, very little that ails our world order has really improved. The ghosts of 1939 Germany seem to me to be haunting the world even today, particularly in the US.

In my mind probably the biggest event of the 20th century, with huge potential social impact, was man's first steps on the moon and our new ability to look back from space and see our planet, our only home, floating through the cold and lonely vacuum of space. On this blue watered oasis in space, one finds everyone you know, and or have ever heard of, and the billions you have not. All of these humans have lived and died or will die, here. But still we humans cannot find whatever it takes within us to put aside our differences and realize that no religious dogma, no tribal loyalty, no selfish focus, no dedication to whatever exclusive canon you may trust, will save us from ourselves. As this history of the 20th century points out again and again, we are all more alike than we are different. We ride through space with our brothers and our sisters, all. Still we are all doomed, and we will likely take much of the animal world with us, unless we accept the fact that we are all riding this same ball through space and what happens to our brothers and sisters will eventually impact us all. Getting along and taking care of our only ride through space and time is the only choice we have. That is at least if we choose to survive for much longer as a species.

From Watson's conclusion:
There is ... "an interesting absence (in this book) that readers may have noticed. I refer to the relative dearth of non-Western thinkers. When this book was conceived, it was my intention (and the publishers’) to make the text as international and multicultural as possible. The book would include not just European and North American – Western – ideas, but would delve into the major non-Western cultures to identify their important ideas and their important thinkers, be they philosophers, writers, scientists, or composers. I began to work my way through scholars who specialized in the major non-Western cultures: India, China, Japan, southern and central Africa, the Arab world. I was shocked (and that is not too strong a word) to find that they all (I am not exaggerating, there were no exceptions) came up with the same answer, that in the twentieth century, the non-Western cultures have produced no body of work that can compare with the ideas of the West. In view of the references throughout the book to racism, I should make it clear that a good proportion of these scholars were themselves members of those very non-Western cultures. More than one made the point that the chief intellectual effort of his or her own (non-Western) culture in the twentieth century has been a coming to terms with modernity, learning how to cope with or respond to Western ways and Western patterns of thought, chiefly democracy and science. "

Watson goes on to point out that:
"One person that may offer a clue to this discrepancy is Sir Vidia Naipaul. In 1981 Naipaul visited four Islamic societies – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. ... (and) In all four places, he said, Islam drew its strength from a focus on the past that prevented development, and that very lack of development meant that the peoples of the Islamic nations could not cope in the West. The 'rage' and 'anarchy' induced by this kept them locked into the faith - and so the circle continues."

For me these observations, made as they were at the close of the 20th century, were a dark and prophetic warning of what the new century would harbor. This world would witness the results of this 'rage and 'anarchy' in only the second year of the new millennium with the attacks of September 11, 2001. And this is not to mention the reaction, or should I say over reaction, that these attacks would induced from the Western world. In my mind, we westerners have a tendency to lay the fault for these actions, as terrible as they were, at the feat of all non-white and non-Anglo Saxons. When in fact the cause is deeper. It is both cultural and intellectual or perhaps more accurately anti-intellectual. Clearly, we ignore the pain and angst that this modern world brings to diverse peoples at our own peril.

I must admit to being a bit shocked by this revelations. I, not being of a particularly religious bent, had never considered the psychological differences induced in the faithful by the various world religions. But in hindsight this observation is a potent one. Please believe me I am not intending to be anti-Islamic. But the truth remains these are many of the disenfranchise. And they wish to turn the clock back and push us back into a world of pre-20th century being, were they are or were more comfortable.

All of this and much more I gleaned from reading this "Intellectual History of the 20th Century". It is assuredly worth the effort to read it all. But to be truthful few are likely to do so. Such effort is not in the DNA of the many of us in this modern world. But if you read nothing else you should read the concluding and final chapter of this great book. I believe and hope it alone will teach you something that will make your life a bit more worth living. I know it did this for me. ...more

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Jan 31, 2015 Vikas Datta rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A veritable tour de force of concepts, thought and works that permeated the century... a must read for anyone who wants to chart the various tides of intellectual ferment and achievement it had... on the other hand, missed a few key ideas - liberation theology for one..

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Jul 27, 2010 Emily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Chockful of information, but inevitably laborious. Read prudently and don't take a 6-month long break from it.

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Oct 24, 2018 ShawnLeeZX rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy

If I would like to summarize the book in one sentence, it would be: after science gradually showed that human race is not more than a highly evolved wild animal, and the binding force of religion, and the collective survival press that build community faded away, how the race instinctively, and consciously sought a new order, which for now is elusive.

The information conveyed in the book is as strong as the ones from *From Dawn to Decadence* By Jacque, and the message --- for the modern part, If I would like to summarize the book in one sentence, it would be: after science gradually showed that human race is not more than a highly evolved wild animal, and the binding force of religion, and the collective survival press that build community faded away, how the race instinctively, and consciously sought a new order, which for now is elusive.

The information conveyed in the book is as strong as the ones from *From Dawn to Decadence* By Jacque, and the message --- for the modern part, since *Modern Mind* only discusses this part, which is in a much more detail than *Dawn --- agrees: that is, current era is the nadir of the Western civilization, where the liberty, rationality, passion, and morality, from the Reformation, Age of Reason, Age of Romantics, and Victoria periods, were torn down one by one by relativism, aesthetics, and the dark side of Darwin's discovery.

The answer, though how much tentative it may be, also in a large proportion agrees. In *Dawn*, Jacque envisions human society in the future would be run by technocracy, where the mathematical thinking is the new Latin. Though the projection is of longer term, where the future that the society is run by techies is described in a rather bleak tone, giving the feeling that no exciting future seems will come from this rational thinking. In certain sense, I feel this is true, for that is what I feel. However, the zen-like calmness is not because, at least for me, I do not find the future exciting, but I realize how hard and long term it would be for societies to change by the force of science and technology, accompanying corresponding philosophy, and how tiny the human race compared with the vast universe. In *Modern Mind*, the author looks at the problems that are in the near future, and still has the hope that the advance in the western societies can help the third world, while in *Dawn*, Jacque states in a disappointing tone that the advanced would let the third world die out of the passion for war, which I do not blame the author, since that feels like the attitude of the majority of the citizens of the developed states. The answer provided in *Modern Mind* is that science can gradually unravel the domain of arts, philosophy, literature, and scientists have the potential to be the next intellectuals (though this is the opinion of Johnsman mostly, the advocate of the *Third Culture*). The language of science would give a common ground for all societies, and let them communicate and build a larger confederation than the nationalism could provide. If human society could successfully operate without inducing the bloodshed happened in the two world war, which fueled by social Darwinism, Communism, Nationalism, the common ground that could provide by science is the the most promising answer.

The answer is at least not discouraging, which is also what I have in mind, though I do not want to describe it here, for the map has not been completely mapped out yet. In short, I believe things can be fixed, before the system failure, or it must be fixed.

Personally, the book gave me a relief, though not a big one. In a way, I have been hunted by ghosts in the part, the Confucianism, Communism, Liberalism, Libertarianism; the ghost from the classic age, and the ideology age. It is a comfort to know these ages are gone, and it tore away the distortion lens that were placed in front of my eyes, and dispelled many confusion, or questions. In some way, I have lived at an age that is blended by the thousands of years ago one, and the one hundred years ago one. The time has changed, for better, or for worse. Science has come to rescue in the past, so it is for now. Scientists may have a much large responsibility than they carried in the past ages, which were mainly done by the public intellectuals. It is not to say that intellectuals have been replaced by scientists, which is wrong in every way, since most scientists are professionals works for reputation, or bread, but that public intellectuals and scientists have merged, and it is up to the top ones to guide the earth spaceship.

The journey keeps going, for better, or for worse, but it is at least not nostalgia. ...more

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Mar 24, 2019 SecondMe80 rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, modern-world-and-rech, feb19

I found the book strong and even entertaining in the paragraphs where it recounts specific discoveries and inventions. As an opus total, the work is rather disappointing, as it is no more than a collection of stories about brilliant minds, sometimes interspersed with criticism of ideas that did not turn out to be quite as brilliant.
However, I would have wished for a text that spans nearly 800 pages to take me, as its reader, more by the hand. Of course, Watson's style is directive in that he ...more

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May 02, 2018 Craigtator rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-rated, book-orphanage

Over 800 pages, he name drops probably close to a thousand thinkers and discusses several hundred topics. Along the way he establishes linkages between psychology, art, literature, physics, chemistry, biology and math.

It should have been called The Western Modern Mind. I have trouble believing that the Asians, Africans, and South Americans scant descriptions here reflect their contribution to twentieth century thought.

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Mar 26, 2019 David Small rated it it was amazing

This is really a wonderful one volume survey of twentieth century arts, culture, and science. Anyone interested in where we've been for the last one hundred years will find this book indispensable. I highly recommend it.

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Sep 02, 2018 Praveen Kishore rated it it was amazing

Phew! A mammoth book - an encyclopedia! A brilliant, vast, wide ranging and engaging story about intellectual history of the past century - arts, culture, science, technology, social science, music, literature, drama, architecture and what not! And it is almost exclusively about the western civilisation, naturally so, as the other civilisations have hardly produced new body of work in the realm of ideas and inventions during 20th century.
A must read!

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Jul 17, 2015 Wray F rated it it was amazing

What can you say about a book as comprehensive as this? It covers more than a hundred years of some of the most significant insights and ideas in art, philosophy, science, literature, psychology, etc. In a way, it's an expanded encyclopedia. Maybe some of the people written of will get half a page. Others will get a few. Depends on their influence and the significance of what they achieved. This is a great book to keep around, read a couple chapters, read something else, come back to it, pick it What can you say about a book as comprehensive as this? It covers more than a hundred years of some of the most significant insights and ideas in art, philosophy, science, literature, psychology, etc. In a way, it's an expanded encyclopedia. Maybe some of the people written of will get half a page. Others will get a few. Depends on their influence and the significance of what they achieved. This is a great book to keep around, read a couple chapters, read something else, come back to it, pick it up again. It's really frustrating how little of this I'm going to remember. There are far too many names and achievements and much will likely get lost in all the folds of gray matter. However, you never know when something stuck and will pop into your head in conversation.
Some interesting claims put forth: Psychology and the school of Freud has almost completely failed. Very little proof exists after all this time about the effectiveness of most therapy and ideas of the unconcious. We may be in the age where science can finally do little outside of theory. Many of the major problems have been solved and the sciences have already come together in patterns of agreement regarding why the world works and our evolutionary place within it. At this point, we may only be able to speculate and theorize. The universe may be beyond the scope of finding out much more that we already know. It is too vast and our resources are too limited. A scary thought, but one that seems to make sense.
The last chapter is pretty astounding and catches one a bit off guard. The original intent of this book was to show achievements FROM AROUND THE WORLD over the last century or so. East and West. North and South. As a result, of course several people are mentioned who have made contributions. Still, Mr. Watson claims that, after he and his staff started researching, very little could be found outside of the West in terms of major achievements. He blames failing and outdated cultures and religious fundamentalism, among others, for stilted thinking and the lack of progress in their respective civilizations. Clearly, many will be bothered by this claim and even make claims of racism or cultural elitism. Me....I never did the research, so I don't know. It's quite a stunning claim. ...more

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Sep 05, 2009 Gene Grant rated it it was amazing

This was a great thought provoking book about the ideas of the modern era and how religion went from being central to being discarded by so many intellectuals in the modern era, but then the brave new Godless world turned out to be worse than the old one and the post modern era dawned in recognition that the materialist and scientific worldview that discards God is not the salvation of mankind that almost all intellectuals thought it would be. This book is a great companion read to the Evolution ...more

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Oct 10, 2010 Maia rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

An ambitious, thorough, investigative-type chronicle of what shaped and influenced our lives today as seen through the lens of the ideas, discoveries, facts and 'opinions' (though undoubtedly questionable') of the 20th Century--from Freud and Darwin to pop culture and political icons. Pretty much anyone can see themselves reflected in this 'mental' voyage--one which, at times, when the writing soars, can even be thrilling to follow. In many ways, the 20st Century was thrilling, despite 2 World ...more

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Feb 09, 2009 Orin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ideas

What a brick! I finally got through it. This ambitious book, attempting to summarize the main currents of 20th century thought, is largely successful. Some of the chapters are superb summaries of some exciting periods of modern thought. I could point to the chapter on recent developments in evolutionary science (Genetic Safari, 34, and The Best Idea, Ever, 39) or the chapter on recent literature (The Empire Write Back, 40). The chapter on French post-modernist thought largely boggled me, but ...more

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Jan 20, 2016 NJ Wong rated it it was amazing

Shelves: shelfari-favorites

To me, "The Modern Mind", which was published in 2000, is a much better book than "The Age of Atheists" that was published this year. "Modern Mind" actually predates "Ideas: A History - From Fire to Freud" (published in 2005), which was my first book from Peter Watson.

This book is as thick as "Ideas", and thus took me a very long time to finish. I love the expansiveness of the topics covered, which I feel is Watson's strength. Books like "Ideas" and "Modern Mind" cover a vast array of subjects - ...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Jeff Kelleher rated it really liked it

Like a huge table of delicious hors d'oeuvres.

It took weeks of on-and-off reading to finally finish this 770-page "intellectual history of the 20th Century". An amazing feat--summarizing every significant idea of the era. Inevitably superficial, often so much so that it leaves the reader as puzzled as enlightened. But it's the kind of book that sets your mind churning with almost every page and, like a good quotation book, stirs you to want to read the original works. It sharpens your regret ...more

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Oct 14, 2008 David rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone high school age or older

This is history the way it is not taught in schools. Watson weaves a tapestry from diverse threads of intellectual activities - art, music, physics, economics, poetry, politics, psychology, etc. He shows how major figures from the 19th century (such as Freud, Marx and Darwin)had their impacts in the 20th. The picture that results has many features that weren't apparent before, even if, like me, you lived through the majority of the century.

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Jun 24, 2015 Alexander Weber rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-stars

Ok, obviously he can't include everything, and I felt like there was a lot missing in terms of math and statistics and science and what not. However, that may just be my bias. He also had a lot on architecture that I could care less about, but that may be because I know so little about it.

Besides that, wonderful book. A little slow at the start, but the ending flew by as I raced through the pages. Again, could be my bias.

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Jun 21, 2013 Justin rated it it was amazing

It is like an encyclopedia. Kind of an anthology of thought. It is good because it covers so much in terms of intellectual breakthroughs of the 20th Century, without leaving out too terribly much. Because of the scope of the project it cannot go into too much detail on each subject, yet its ability to touch on such a vast array of subjects and connect them is admirable. Recommended to anyone interested in intellectual history.

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Nov 06, 2007 lisa_emily rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: aspiring intellectual historians

Shelves: literary-intellectual-studies

This huge, hefty book chronicles ideas that have impacted Western culture during the 20th Century. Everything from philosophy and literature to art and politics are dissected and reviewed. With such a mammoth topic, you would think the book would be unyielding, but amazingly, it reads well. Watson's journalistic talents are put to good use, and after a few weeks of reading, you may be able to say that you understand the world you live in, a little better.

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Aug 04, 2013 Stephen Armstrong rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Watson is a British journalist and writer. This is a descriptive intellectual history, not tracing out memes so much as recounting and accounting the intellectual trends of 20th Century life from art to zoology.

After awhile, it became somewhat tedious and labored, alas. I finished it by trying to imagine what it might be like to have such comprehensive and exhaustive knowledge.

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About Peter Watson

Peter Watson

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Peter Watson was educated at the universities of Durham, London and Rome, and was awarded scholarships in Italy and the United States.

After a stint as Deputy Editor of New Society magazine, he was for four years part of the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ team of investigative journalists. He wrote the daily Diary column of the London Times before becoming that paper’s New York correspondent. He returned ...more

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“The discipline of history is particularly important in this context because while science has had a direct impact on how historians write, and what they write about, history has itself been evolving. One of the great debates in historiography is over how events move forward. One school of thought has it that ‘great men’ are mostly what matter, that the decisions of people in power can bring about significant shifts in world events and mentalities. Others believe that economic and commercial matters force change by promoting the interests of certain classes within the overall population. In the twentieth century, the actions of Stalin and Hitler in particular would certainly seem to suggest that ‘great’ men are vital to historical events. But the second half of the century was dominated by thermonuclear weapons, and can one say that any single person, great or otherwise, was really responsible for the bomb? No. In fact, I would suggest that we are living at a time of change, a crossover time in more ways than one, when what we have viewed as the causes of social movement in the past – great men or economic factors playing on social classes – are both being superseded as the engine of social development. That new engine is science.” — 0 likes

“Computable Numbers’ into practice.21 This was” — 0 likes

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