Florian Illies, "1913: The Year Before The Storm", Paperback, Melville House

ISBN: 978-1-61219-391-5 Language: English Published: 2014, Melville House Publishing Condition: Good; Mild wear and markings to the cover (see photos) but interior pages are in excellent condition. Back cover: "Before the war to end all wars, there was the year to end all years... It was the year that Henry Ford first put a conveyor belt in his car factory, and the year Louis Armstrong first picked up a trumpet. It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract, and that coco Chanel and Prada opened their first dress shops. It was the year Proust began his opus, that Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring, and the first Armory Show in New York introduced the world to Picasso and the realm of abstract art. It was the year the recreational drug now known as ecstasy was invented. It was 1913, the year before the world plunged into the catastrophic darkness of World War II. In a witty yet moving narrative that progresses month by month through the year, and is interspersed with numerous photos and documentary artifacts (such as Kafka's love letters), Florian Illies ignores the conventions of the stodgy tome so common with 'one year' histories. Forefronting cultural matters such as politics, he delivers a charming and riveting tale of a world full of hope and unlimited possibility, peopled with amazing characters and radical politics, bristling with new art and new technology... even as ominous storm clouds begin to gather."