The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought

In an age when professional historians write only "micro-history," and when it is considered in bad-taste to find large themes in history, Everdell's great synthetic work is bracingly bold, ambitious and brilliant. Canvassing the first years of the twentieth century, he finds surprising connections between new, modernist mathematics, science, music, art and philosophy. I didn't always agree with his interpretation, but the book challenged and cajolled me, and now, two years after I first read it, I doubt that a week goes by when I don't find myself thinking about it, disputing it in my mind, often consulting it. This is a very, very good book: Everdell should be thanked for his wisdom and -- odd as this may sound -- for his courage.

Books like these are hard to find. Everdell has attempted something ambitious and difficult: to situate some of the most influential and fascinating cultural figures of modernism in vivid historical context. The result is a rich tapestry whose warp and woof includes innovators from both the arts and sciences. A book which treated only one or the other would have been interesting in its own right, but Everdell went for broke by insisting that the modernist climate is best understood by showing the wide-spread cultural cross-pollination characteristic of the time. This book is one of the few gems of intellectual history that tries and succeeds in recreating the cultural atmosphere at the turn of the century. Some vignettes here are naturally better than others (the chapter on Strindberg is not to be missed!), but the thesis that ties them all together is strong and sound, so the book works as a brilliant study of the modernist impulse. At a time when boundaries between academic disciplines are starting to give way to new and exciting discourses, Everdell's book proves to be a timely contribution to this budding trend. Everdell loves what he studies and it shows.

As a "general reader" I have to take issue with the reviewer from Cambridge. The advantage of a book is that, where discussion gets too particular or specialized, one may content oneself with the general idea--in this case, without penalty. Everdell's grasp of fields as diverse as mathematics and painting may try the expertise of all but a few specialists, but his unifying theses will not. And this is more than a work of "intellectual" history: the author deals with the practices and discoveries of various forms or art and science and avoids the trap of their a priori reduction to intellectual principles.

In a time of vulgar relativism and particularism,in which "postmodernist" ideas increasingly influence not only intellectual but also popular culture, Everdell brings us back to a consideration of the period to which postmodernism putatively reacts -- i.e., modernism. Much, of course, has been written about modernism, but Everdell's ideas are much more comprehensive and solidly argued than almost any others I have read. Intellectual history is a daring (and sometimes dangerous) enterprise, but one that is critical for understanding what we think and why. Everdell's book is a model of the genre -- learned, thoughtful, innovative, witty, and clear.