Another great history read.The author was trying to put a different interpretation on the pre-war years - he is concerned that the period is characterized as a quiet "summer" before the war started, or is simply overshadowed as a lead-in period to the more important years of actual armed conflict.
Blom shows that the period in fact was anything but serene - marked by rapid change that wasn't giving folks a sense of where things might be headed - hence a feeling of "vertigo."
He devotes one chapter to each of the fourteen years. Starting with the famed Paris exposition and the continuing ascent of machines (as recounted by Henry Adams in this book). Discussion of France's decline - lower population growth than Germany, Dreyfus affair, loss of Alsace/Lorraine in 1870 (propagandized to school children thereafter) - was the country losing its virility? Roger Casement's success in the Congo (and later flirtation with Germany). The rise of Japan - Russia's loss in 1905. Women's rights, changing roles. Progress in the sciences - but creating more questions than the hoped-for certainty. Eugenics? Freud. Increasing frequency of mental illness of various kinds. Cities. Speed: automobiles (15mph!), early airplanes. Department stores, consumerism for the masses.
Educated folks who would laugh at religion join pseudo-mystical societies - with similar rituals.
Still not sure what Virginia Woolf meant when she said human nature changed in December 1910 - including reference to the cook's hat.
Jacques Barzun's work on cultural history goes into quite a bit of detail, and provides some more context around the topics discussed by Blom; I'll post on it when finished. Many overlapping concepts, which helps this make some sense.
