Fracture
Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938
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Narrated by:
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Ralph Lister
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By:
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Philipp Blom
About this listen
When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.
Historian Philipp Blom argues that in the aftermath of World War I, citizens of the West launched into hedonistic, aesthetic, and intellectual adventures of self-discovery. It was a period of both bitter disillusionment and visionary progress in which artists, scientists, and philosophers grappled with the question of how to live and what to believe in a broken age. America closed its borders to European refugees and turned away from the desperate poverty caused by the Great Depression. On both sides of the Atlantic, disenchanted voters flocked to Communism and Fascism, forming political parties based on violence and revenge that presaged the horror of a new World War.
Vividly re-creating this era of unparalleled ambition, artistry, and innovation, Blom captures the seismic shifts that defined the interwar period and continue to shape our world today.
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Inventing Japan [Modern Library Chronicles]
- By: Ian Buruma
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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LA Times Book Award winner and expert on the past and present Japan, Ian Buruma examines the transformation of a country. Following Japan's history from its opening to the West in 1853 to its hosting of the 1964 Olympics, Buruma focuses on how figures such as Commodore Matthew Perry, Douglas MacArthur, and Emperor Mitsushito helped shape this complex country.
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Excellent Primer on Modern Japan
- By John Pavliga on 06-13-06
By: Ian Buruma
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Israel
- A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world's attention, aroused its imagination, and, lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel's people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions.
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Excellent, mildly but honestly biased, terrible narration
- By Schaq on 04-01-17
By: Daniel Gordis
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Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century
- By: Alexandra Popoff
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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If Vasily Grossman's 1961 masterpiece, Life and Fate, had been published during his lifetime, it would have reached the world together with Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. But Life and Fate was seized by the Russian KGB. When it emerged posthumously, decades later, it was recognized as the War and Peace of the 20th century.
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What? Nazism = communism?
- By James Messelbeck on 06-25-19
By: Alexandra Popoff
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Where the Jews Aren't
- The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan. The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there.
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The Jewish World of Our Ancestors
- By Roberta L. Ruben on 06-16-18
By: Masha Gessen
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Notes on a Foreign Country
- An American Abroad in a Post-American World
- By: Suzy Hansen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
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A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
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The Islamic Enlightenment
- The Struggle Between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times
- By: Christopher de Bellaigue
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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This absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam during the 19th and early 20th centuries offers a game-changing assessment of the Middle East. Beginning his account in 1798, de Bellaigue demonstrates how the Middle East has long welcomed modern ideals and practices, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from seclusion, and the development of democracy.
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fascinating story not told.elsewhere in one place
- By Joseph Sullivan on 11-30-21
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The Long Hangover
- Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past
- By: Shaun Walker
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.
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Fascinating and fair book on Putin's Russia
- By MyPublicName on 02-16-18
By: Shaun Walker
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The Great Escape
- Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The stunning story of the breathtaking journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, what they experienced along their dangerous route, and how they changed America and the world. In a style both personal and historically groundbreaking, acclaimed author Kati Marton (born in Budapest) tells the tale of their youth in Budapest's Golden Age of the early 20th century, their flight, and their lives of extraordinary accomplishment, danger, glamour, and poignancy.
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very interesting, well-narrated
- By D. Littman on 12-17-06
By: Kati Marton
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1946
- The Making of the Modern World
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1946, Victor Sebestyen creates a taut, panoramic narrative and takes us to meetings that changed the world: to Berlin in July 1945, when Truman tells Stalin that we have successfully tested the bomb; to Ye'nan, China, in January 1946, when General George Marshall tells the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that Americans won't send troops to China, assuring that the Communists will attain power.
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An education. Somber, detailed, many-faceted
- By Philo on 08-20-16
By: Victor Sebestyen
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How the Scots Invented the Modern World
- By: Arthur Herman
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics - contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world.
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Eagerly Awaited Audiobook
- By Lulu on 09-01-16
By: Arthur Herman
What listeners say about Fracture
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ellen Wright
- 11-02-24
Epilogue is the reason to stay
The Epilogue is one of the more effective and thoughtful I’ve heard in a while. It’s as if he knew what we needed to hear during these fraught times.
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- Jean
- 07-23-15
Lots of good trivia information
I am reading this book as part of my World War One anniversary project.
Philipp Blom asks the central question that arose for so many everyday people after WWI. “What values were there left to live for?” Blom is thorough in documenting the many attempts to answer the question. He discusses some stories of the day such as the stirrings of fascism by Italian poet D’Annunzio. H.G. Well’s scathing review of Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. He discusses the various forms of art and the prominent artists of the time period. Blom reviews the activism of America’s eugenics enthusiasts. He also discussed the increase of totalitarian regimes, Dadaism, the lost generation and an excellent section on Jazz and the Blues.
Blom discusses the hopeless and lost feelings of the time and the dread, paranoia and anger that pervaded everything. The book is well written and brings a refreshing clarity to uncertain times of any era including our own. Ralph Lister narrated the book.
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6 people found this helpful
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- TSG5
- 11-23-20
Insights into the beginning of modernity and today
A fascinating social history of western culture between the two world wars which the author characterizes as Europe's second 30 years war. The modern world is described as a reaction to the dismantled security of an established order and "known" truths which had been shattered by WW I and its aftermath. Written before Trumpism truly took hold, Blom certainly anticipated its emergence. A glimmer of hope can be found in his epilogue where he compares 1929 to 2008. With some small distance from the 2020 election perhaps institutions of the west are holding this time and a better future can be realized.
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- Alan Siegfried
- 11-23-23
connections
connected a lot of events from various parts of the world in regards to the e historic changes taking place after WW1 and prior to WW2.
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- John
- 11-29-15
Clap trap with a British accent
Lots of cliched superficial so-called history. Dull writing. A bore
The book just treads water
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1 person found this helpful