Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

The extraordinary story of the 20th century, as told from the furthest fringes of science, art and culture. For readers of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.     Before 1900, history was an account of great discoveries that actually made sense. People understand innovations like the steam engine, agriculture, or electricity. The twentieth century, by contrast, gave us quantum entanglement, cubism, relativity, psychedelics, postmodernism, chaos maths, and the Somme.      This is the story of that confusing century as told through the ideas produced at the furthest fringes of our sciences, arts, and culture. Its cast includes well-known geniuses such as Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, and Pablo Picasso, lesser known geniuses like Edward Lorenz, Sergey Korolyov, or Shigeru Miyamoto, and infamous but influential ne'er-do-wells like Timothy Leary, Aleister Crowley and Keith Richards. In this company we take a tour through ideas as strange as general relativity, DNA, the subconscious, Gaia theory, and Dada.      In this brilliantly written and original book, John Higgs explores, with great clarity and wit, the extremes of twentieth century thought, and in doing so shows how a world of empires became a world of individuals. You will never see the twentieth century in the same way again.From the Hardcover edition.

History

John Higgs

J.M.R. Higgs

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

<p>'The future hasn't happened yet. The idea that our civilisation is doomed is not established fact. It is a story we tell ourselves.'In the 1980s, we gave up on the future. When we look ahead now, we imagine economic collapse, environmental disaster and the zombie apocalypse. But what if we are wrong What if this bleak outlook is a generational quirk that afflicted those raised in the twentieth century, but which is already beginning to pass What if we do have a future after allJohn Higgs takes us on a journey past the technological hype and headlines to discover why we shouldn't trust the predictions of science fiction, why nature is not as helpless as we assume and why purpose can never be automated. In the process, we will come to a better understanding of what lies ahead and how, despite everything - despite all the horrors and instability we face - we can build a better future.</p>

Future Starts Here

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

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Books by J.M.R. Higgs