This bookis the first of the multi-volume series entitled Themes in Modern European History. This collection of essays offers a critical survey of European history between 1789 and 1945 and is essential reading for students and scholars of modern European history. The volume is divided into two sections—social movements and cultural currents. While the first section discusses events, representations, experiences, polities and societies of this period, the second section looks at the wider literary and artistic expressions.  

The first five chapters present a panoramic view of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Italian Fascism, British Liberalism and Feminism, from their origins and focus on several key historical moments. The chapter on feminism evaluates all the others from the perspective of ‘the excluded other half of humanity’. The sixth (early modernism) and the seventh (later modernism) chapters address the fundamental question of when ‘modern’ actually begins and go on to show how radical philosophical shifts affected the way in which many writers and artists viewed themselves and art in relation to society and how they manifested themselves in the paintings and literature of the period. The last chapter examines the transformation of popular culture from its identification in the nineteenth century as an element of class recognition into a generational, national and mass-cultural item after World War II.