Reviews for France, Fin de Siecle

The average rating for France, Fin de Siecle based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-12-20 00:00:00 Ingegerd Silvis The closing of a century is a time of change in history and culture. This was never more true than at the end of the nineteenth century; the era now known as the "fin de siecle". Eugen Weber focuses on France in this fine history of that era. It is a history organized topically rather than chronologically. Thus Weber offers discussion of the lives of people, their way of living and the impact of technological changes. The change in political and educational patterns highlight how the old morphs into the new even in this area. Anyone interested in the arts is treated to a discussion of decadence which opens the book. There is the naturalism of writers like Zola, but also the neurosis of the age with hints of Freud and Nietzsche. Even sports is not neglected in this eclectic and always fascinating picture of the end of a century.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-27 00:00:00 Alexandre munier This is an old book from 1986, and it is written in a discursive rather chatty fashion. Nor is it the sharply intellectual history of Schorske's "Fin de Siecle Vienna." But it offers a history of every day life in France from roughly 1870 to 1915, thus providing a very insightful backdrop to World War I, Impressionism, the Dreyfus affair, the theater of the absurd, Proust and modern Paris.