1913 : the world before the Great War / Charles Emmerson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY. Most retrospective accounts of the world in 1913 reduce it to either its most frivolous features - last bright summers in grand aristocratic residences - or to its most destructive ones: the rivalries of great European powers, rumbling social unrest in Russia and the angst of Viennese coffee houses. The portraits that result are dominated either by the faded pastels of aristocratic indulgence or the undifferentiated blackness of a world on the brink of the abyss. The true nature of the times - optimistic, modern and internationalist, as much as pessimistic, archaic and nationalist - is lost. 1913 paints a coherent picture without skimming over differences, or ignoring contradictions. Through the stories of cities from Detroit to Bombay, Winnipeg to Durban, Tokyo to Algiers, Charles Emmerson reveals a year in which a truly global society was emerging for the first time in human history.