The culture of time and space, 1880-1918

The cultural historian, Stephen Kern, claims that a new way of experiencing and conceptualizing time and space emerged in Europe and in America from 1880 to the end of World War I and that this change is best understood in terms of the technological innovations in transportation and communication that occurred during this tumultuous period. His primary concern is to document the existence of this transformation rather than to explain it, and thus he seeks to establish patterns of coherence rather than lines of causation. His goals are to demonstrate the novelty of these conceptualizations and to illustrate their universality by describing their manifestations in widely divergent areas of cultural life. The result is a richly detailed and absorbing narrative that synthesizes major events, innovations, and ideas in a wide variety of fields including art, literature, politics, science, and technology. -- From http://www.jstor.org (Oct. 9, 2014).