I have been an admirer of Paul Johnson since reading A History of the American People, and always buy his books as I come across them in book sales. A gargantuan panorama of the 15 transforming years immediately after the Napoleonic era, when "peace came and immense new resources in finance, management, science and technology which were now available could be put to constructive purposes." CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | He also throws an unexpected light on how artists and scientists formed a "conjunction of minds" by drawing on work in other fields (e.g., how intuitive speculations by Coleridge and Shelley about atomic and electromagnetic theory inspired the experimental science of Davy and Michael Faraday). Mark Podwal, by This marvelously readable work from the author of Modern Times , a BOMC main selection in cloth, chronicles the formation of the modern world, illuminating … Review title: The end of the world as they knew it. Categories: I wonder if I would like it as much now as when I read it so long ago? Bayly's The Birth of the Modern World makes for fascinating reading. He covers a wide number of subjects, political, social, financial, artistic and others. See my review in my Sense-of-History-account: Epic, magisterial, even overwhelming. I've read two other of Johnson's histories (one on Christianity and one on America) and admired them both, particularly for their fresh insights into familiar terrain. It is well worth your time. New books! October 29, 2011 UNITED STATES | On the Congress of Vienna. We’re glad you found a book that interests you. 2.0 out of 5 stars A difficult birth Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2015 Global history has become hugely fashionable in the last decade or so, and alongside Pomeranz’s Great Divergence, Bayly’s The Birth of the Modern World is one of its leading titles. Howard Zinn The depth and breadth of his scholarship is simply astonishing. The Birth of the Modern is an amazing achievement! Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. with Categories: He comments -“The age abounded in great personalities; warriors, statesmen and tyrants; outstanding inventors and technologists; and writers, artists and musicians of the highest genius, women as well as men. Start by marking “The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830” as Want to Read: Error rating book. I particularly liked his excursus on how much people walked back in the day. What a fascinating and frustrating book! I had to take a couple of breaks from reading it or I would have drown in all the detail. Paul Johnson's thesis seems to boil down to "boy, I sure do like this bit of time a bunch.". POLITICS | In a nutshell, The Clockwork Universe tells how the world progressed from 1600, when philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Church for proclaiming that the earth was just one of an infinite number of planets, to 1705 when Isaac Newton was knighted by the Queen of England for his discoveries in physics, one them being how how gravity maintained planets' orbits around suns - … But the author turned demagogue at times, and certain passages felt really forced and thin, mostly where events were given a late-twentieth-century conservative interpretation that simply didn't fit. Fascinating period, top-down history, exclusionary of course, lovely stylistically. For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. This wasn't a real succes to me. Johnson's narrative and analytical skills even compensate for many dubious passages when his conservatism leads him to stretch for parallels between 19th- and 20th-century politics—for example, when he sees the genesis of the US-British "special relationship" at a moment when both nations continued to be wary of the other's attention, or likens Romantic admirers of Napoleon such as Shelley, Hazlitt, and Byron to intellectuals enamored of Stalinism in the 1930's. translated by THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN WORLD SOCIETY, 1815-1830 by Paul Johnson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 1991 A gargantuan panorama of the 15 transforming years immediately after the Napoleonic era, when "peace came and immense new resources in finance, management, science and technology which were now available could be put to constructive purposes." I learned a lot, but it was a struggle. But the sheer scope and volume of this book is difficult to comprehend. It is a book packed with facts and story both big and small that he uses to make his point. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. moments, which is what makes history fun for me. Someone was asleep at the wheel. This is a history written by a journalist rather than an academic historian, and sadly is not a reliable source of information. This thematic history of the world from 1780 to the onset of the First World War reveals that the world was far more 'globalised' at this time than is commonly thought. Johnson argues that virtually everything we associate with the modern world - art, science, politics, society, economy, etc. Despite his conservatism and strained attempts to attack the contemporary Left by association to discreditable persons and movements in the early nineteenth century, Johnson is an excellent writer and this is an entertaining, sometimes enlightening, cultural history of the period. Elie Wiesel At times fascinating and others overwhelming. Wilson relates how clippers -- so termed because of the time they cut off sea voyages -- allowed news and goods to be taken around the world in record time. The official blurb says it the best: "In 1793, a canal digger named William Smith made a startling discovery. © Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society: The Life of Marx and the Development of His Work (Volume I: 1818-1841) $ 19.99 – $ 34.00 Format Clear eBook ( $ 19.99 ) He has also written for leading newspapers and magazines in Britain, the US and Europe. It connects so many it important pieces of innovation to what has become our modern world that it truly turned my head. The Birth of Modern Peer Review. Spanning the period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the revolutions of 1830, this lengthy little tome (1,000 pages---I bought it at $6 primarily for the value-per-page figure, although I was delighted at my dumb luck for having done so) covers mostly Europe, although it does digress into the Americas and China to explore the interactions of the Old World in the New. . Howard Zinn & (Just for the record, I hated Modern Times and the author likes to get spanked by prostitutes...) Beyond that, Johnson paints a picture of history which I've yet to see done. Interesting to get a point of view so far from my own, though. Many times I wondered how certain subject matter was relevant to the book's theme -- including a particular fascination with Byron's sex life. This book yielded a few really excellent ideas - like identifying the global scope of the expropriation of indigenous folks' land at the hands of grain-growing settler nations using state power - and helped fill in the gaping hole that was my knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars. We’d love your help. Well worth reading. What a fascinating and frustrating book! For me it wasn't something off-putting but something I sought out. Covers an incredible range of topics on an international scale. A 350th anniversary tribute to the Royal Society documents the work of late seventeenth-century scientific geniuses who, in spite of period ignorance, forg… None of that, though, quite prepares one for the sheer scale, ambition and power of The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914. Covering the period 17801914, The Birth of the Modern World shows how events in Asia, Africa, and South America from the decline of the eighteenth-century Islamic empires to the anti-European Boxer rebellion of 1900 in China had a direct impact on European and American history. A brilliant book by Paul Johnson, best known for "Modern Times". ; It is a book packed with facts and story both big and small that he uses to make his … That led me to Modern Times, probably the most interesting history book I have ever read, and then to this, The Birth of the Modern, World Society 1815-1830. Astoundingly, he writes with fascination about events and movements in virtually all fields of human endeavor, whether the subjugation of Native Americans by Andrew Jackson, the scientific discoveries of Humphrey Davy, the compositions of Beethoven, the transparent innovations of George Stephenson and John McAdam, or such social phenomena as dueling, adultery, illegitimacy, and animal protectionism. This is the kind of book that reminds you that all of those GRE vocab flash cards weren't made up for the test. If your are a fan of James Burke, I highly recommend this book! From Wellington at Waterloo and Jackson at New Orleans to the surge of democratic power and the new forces of reform that emerged by 1830, this is a portrait of a period of great and rapid changes that saw the United States transform itself from an ex—colony into a formidable nation; Britain become the first industrial world power; Russia develop the fatal flaws that would engulf her in the 20th century and China and Japan set the stage for future development and catastrophe. That will put some people off--although it's notable I saw more than one review from readers who said in spite of that they found this book incisive and readable. I'm kind of embarrassed it took me so long, but this book changed the way I think of history - in a good way, I mean. Perhaps doing backbreaking labor six days a week and dying of syphilis in some back alley in Hamburg at the age of 36 didn’t make him appreciate his good fortune. This is very likely the finest work of history I've ever read, eclipsing even. MODERN | He clearly states at the beginning, his thesis and proceeds to brilliantly make his point. GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | Trouble signing in? Reviews "With its dazzling erudition and its vast scope, The Birth of the Modern World is a masterpiece of distance-annihilating synthesis…At a stroke, all other general histories of the nineteenth century have become parochial…I cannot think of any living historian who … Reading this book made me really understand how everything in history is connected in just one big continuing story. Marion Wiesel Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains. Goes into a wide range of detail from politics, industrial development & science, arts, music etc. It connects so many it important pieces of innovation to what has become our modern world that it truly turned my head. I'm glad I finished it, because although dated (1991), the book's thesis that 1815-1830 were crucial years for the development the modern world seems to hold up. I wanted to hear from the other side, and ye, Paul Johnson is a British journalist, a believing Catholic--and a conservative. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. To see what your friends thought of this book, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. edited by Author Bio: Paul Johnson. ), a past editor of the New Statesman and the Spectator, is a master of vigorous narratives on epic topics. Paul Johnson has a truly comprehensive mind and the book is well worth the effort it takes to read it, even at exactly 1000 pages. ... Permalink; The Birth of the Modern World Six 'killer apps' made the West a source of economic dynamism and political stability. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. I put this down about two-thirds of the way through. The basic thesis is that everything we think of as constituting the "modern" world was laid down between 1815 and 1830, and he makes a damn good case. The 1815-1830 time frame sometimes is too tight and is therefore regularly enlarged. I find it hard to review three star books; there’s less to rave about or rant about. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). The New York Times review printed at the time of the book's first publishing is revealing and just. Ray Suarez, by He was educated at Stonyhurst School in Clitheroe, Lancashire and Magdalen College, Oxford, and first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for, and later editing, the New Statesman magazine. Covering the period 17801914, The Birth of the Modern World shows how events in Asia, Africa, and South America from the decline of the eighteenth-century Islamic empires to the anti-European Boxer rebellion of 1900 in China had a direct impact on European and American history. Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. Heyday by Ben Wilson review – the birth of the modern world From noiseless curtain rings to the first transatlantic communication – the Victorian wonders that shaped history HMS Agamemnon lays … Even though I disagree with Johnson's politics, I thank him for this beautifully written book. Johnson ties it all together without being boring for longer than a page. The southern apologists were still, in their hearts, ashamed of slavery. Pre-publication book reviews and features keeping readers and industry "With its dazzling erudition and its vast scope, The Birth of the Modern World is a masterpiece of distance-annihilating synthesis…At a stroke, all other general histories of the nineteenth century have become parochial…I cannot think of any living historian who could match this feat. Buy The Birth of the Modern: World Society 18151830 Unabridged by Johnson, Paul (ISBN: 9781455158126) from Amazon's Book Store. 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