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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.82
EAN num: 9780395937587
ISBN number: 0395937582
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: September 14, 2000
Publishing house: Mariner Books
Sale Popularity Level: 11335
Studio: Mariner Books
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Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive in unearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, RITES OF SPRING probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I -- from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. 'The Great War,' as Modris Eksteins writes, 'was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places.' In this 'bold and fertile book' (Atlantic Monthly), Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm through the lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, and such events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publication of the very first modern bestseller, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. RITES OF SPRING is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and toward our future.
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Rated by buyers 
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This interesting book is an effort to meld cultural/intellectual history with a broad interpretation of European history in the early 20th century. Eksteins begins with the outbreak of WWI, the experience of the war, selected features of the interwar period, and concludes with a discusion of the Nazis. Eksteins follows a number of other scholars, for example, Carl Schorske and Fritz Stern, in examining the flight from rationality seen in the pre-WWI period and its consequences. Eksteins' exemplary metaphor is the Stravinsky/Nijinsky/Diaghilev ballet The Rites of Spring. In this work, Eksteins sees the cultivation of the emotional/irrational, the preoccupation with death, and the abandonement of the rational/ethical which he identifies as the intellectual Zeitgeist of the period. Eksteins then proceeds to connect this modernist Zeitgeist with the outbreak of the First World War and ensuing events. In Eksteins analysis, the German nation is a figure of Nietzchean amorality, intoxicated with emotion and a vague idea of the future, attacking the backward looking middle class rationality of the status quo exemplified by Britain.
This book as a number of positive features. The quality of writing is unusually good. Eksteins, in a artful piece of rhetoric, proceeds to carry the Rite of Spring ballet metaphor right up to the end of WWII, giving what could have been a series of chronologically arranged essays a nearly novelistic integrity. Eksteins does very well with cultural history and cultural criticism, and this book contains a good deal of interesting information and analysis.
Eksteins' major thesis of identifying the modernist movement and the outbreak of WWI is, however, questionable. In this model, almost everything about German society, including the Schlieffen plan, is interpreted in a modernist context. The German leadership, drawn from the traditional aristocracy and upper classes, were hardly modernists intoxicated with the future. They were scared of modernization with great anxiety about democratization, the advance of socialism, and incorporation of large numbers of Catholics into the German state. The aggressive foreign policy of Wilhelmine Germany was driven in lage part by a perceived need, typical of authoritarian states under internal pressures, to use foreign adventures to paper over social fissures and to bolster legitimacy. The decision to pursue preventive war against the Franco-German alliance was a result of worries that the rapid industrialization of Russia would erode German preeminence in continental Europe. WWI was not started by daring modernists pursuing creative destruction but rather by a group of backward looking men with a profound fear of the future. Eksteins makes similar errors in his characterization of Britain, which was much more dynamic than implied by his discussions.
Eksteins discusion of WWI focuses on the experience of the Western Front and is generally quite good. This is, however, both typical and somewhat misleading. As is often the case, this account ignores all the other aspects of the war, for example, the enormous scope of the Eastern front, which was much more a war of manuever. Eksteins makes a surprising number of errors. Its not true that the Germans preferred a war of attrition, if anyone aimed at attrition, it was the Allies and their blockade of Germany. The Schlieffen plan, a number of campaigns in the East, unrestricted submarine warfare, and the great offensives of 1918 were all efforts to achieve decisive victory. Eksteins describes the German army as loyal to the end, ignoring the widespread collapse of morale and discipline in 1918. German war aims were hardly vague aspirations driven by modernist adventurism but concrete expressions of a desire to ensure German hegemony, as shown by the terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty.
Eksteins discussions of the interwar period, focusing on the significance of Charles Lindbergh and Erich Maria Remarque, are a combination of astute criticism and not very astute psychodynamic theorizing. His discussions of the Nazis cover ground discussed by many historians who stress the emotional, anti-rational quality of the Nazi movement. Eksteins, however, neglects the specific ideology of the Nazis. This is an error, because while the Nazi ideology was fairly vague, it was important. Anti-Semitism, for example, was a key feature of Nazism but not, at least initially, of Italian Fascism, and this proved to be very important when the Nazis came to power.
Rated by buyers 
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Rites of Spring is an unparalleled work of cultural and historical synthesis, and easily the most interesting cultural history of 20th Century Europe available.
Rated by buyers -
I read excerpts of this in university, and then purchased the book as it was so compelling. I have never read anything that comes close to really giving one a true account of the soldier's experience in the First World War. The descriptions are poetic and profound, and the book puts it together in a manner that conveys the nuances of the war in ways no film or interview can - not any that I've ever seen anyway. There are still passages that stick in my head (years later) because they are so vivid and eye-opening - more so than anything else I've read or seen on the MANY documentaries and films and research I've done about this time. If you're doing research on this period - this is an excellent book. A good companion is Siegred Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (much more factual than the embellished Robert Graves' book Good-bye to All That. This is worth every penny and something you'll refer to again and again if you're a history buff and like to read.
Rated by buyers -
This book totally changed the way I thought about early 20th Century history. Eksteins is not only ingenious in thought, but also in the way he arranges the story. This books is deserving of all the accolades it has recieved.
Rated by buyers -
Professor Ecksteins' book is, on one level, a history that places the Great War in the context of the popular cultural zeitgeist that produced it. While other books have analyzed the outbreak of the war from the perspective of politicians and diplomats, Ecksteins portrays it as a popular cultural upheaval. In this way, this book distinguishes itself from other histories of the period.
On a deeper level, however, the book is a meditative essay on the problem of modernity. In a brief but elegant way, the author tells the story of how the West descended into aesthetic nihilism as it entered the 20th Century. At the turn of the 20th Century, Europe (in culture, art and thought) gave up on the prospect of reason and ethics, and placed all of its hope in aesthetics as an absolute standard of value. By abandoning the metaphysical True and Good in favor of existential Beauty, European culture freed itself to transgress all rules and restraints in pursuit of the tragic and the sublime. The author points out that this was as true on the battlefield as it was in Stravinsky. It was this cultural movement that enabled "total war" and set the tone for the century to come.
The reason this book is so important yesterday is that modernity has not left us; indeed, it has metastasized around the globe. While this book suggests no solution to our problem, it does help to explain how we got here.
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