The Birth of the Modern

Rating:
Summary: Tuchman-like prose comes to review of modern times
Review: Paul Johnson's The Birth of the Modern applies the same exhaustive search of primary sources as a means of bringing one in touch with a historical period as Barbara Tuchman used in such classics as A Distant Mirror. After reading this 1000-pager (which is as hard to put down as any novel I have ever read) I felt more in touch with this fascinating period of 1800-1830 than I have ever been. The strange parallels between this period and the post-cold war world make one contemplate the truth of the Biblical admonition that there is indeed "nothing new under the sun."

Rating:
Summary: Paul Johnson at his typical superb
Review: This reviews the softcover book (rather than the audio cassettes).

Paul Johnson is mankind's present to itself. In this era so forgetful of nearly everything wonderful that ever went before, Johnson makes it his business to document world history. In Birth he focuses on the period 1800-1830 as the beginnings of the modern period.

One could always argue about the choice of period as the cradle of modernity, but Johnson makes a persuasive case for the era he has chosen. The huge political revolutions-American and French-came and went with their far-reaching aftermaths. The War of 1812 ended with decisive American victory over the British, providing Andrew Jackson the stage for his subsequent career. The Industrial Revolution had begun to make itself felt in ordinary British life. Steam had made its entrance and the railroad had taken hold. The British Navy had assumed primacy on the world's oceans. The groundwork was laid for ending slavery worldwide, for Darwin's theory of evolution, for Manifest Destiny in the United States, for the immense German learning that would produce Marx, Nietzsche, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and Hitler. During this period the press became a dominant sociopolitical force. Environmental concerns were first expressed. Modern, cheap road making came into being, a boon to everyone.

Johnson's particular excellence is covering large subjects relatively quickly without losing their essence. Frequently he captures details that bring something alive. Who would have thought, for instance, that the poet Wordsworth would take serious offense over someone poking fun at his legs? Yet the era was such that men's legs were objects of admiration. Beau Brummel introduced the coat and tie, and umbrellas replaced swords as part of men's attire. In this era immediately prior to mass transportation, people had to walk to get to where they were going. And walk they did. Johnson chronicles prodigies of walking by ordinary people, women covering most of the British Isles over periods of weeks just to see something, and then walking back. Abe Lincoln and his sister walked 18 miles a day to go to school, and Lincoln "once walked 34 miles just for the pleasure 'of hearing a lawyer make a speech.'"

Lowly cotton gets royal treatment in Johnson's hands. "The reduction in the price of cotton and the increase in its availability from 1780-1850 was one of the best things that ever happened to the world. Sensible people had long dressed in cotton if they could afford it. As Samuel Johnson observed, clothes made from vegetables like cotton (and linen), could be made truly clean and cool, whereas clothes made from animal materials, like wool and silk, retained an element of grease whatever you did to them." For this reason cotton figured centrally in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the economy of the Old South in America. Notice how hygiene slips into the picture almost by accident. The eradication of most of the killer diseases in the world owes more to thorough hygiene and clean water than strictly to medicine, and the advent of cotton was clearly central to that breakthrough. "In 1730 three out of four children born in London failed to reach their fifth birthday. By 1830 the proportion had been reversed."

Johnson presents interesting characters in interesting ways. "Like many people in a stinking world," artist John Martin was interested in designing a decent sewage system. Charles Babbage introduced computers-100 years before anyone really understood what he was thinking of. The description of Simón Bolívar nails a certain modern politician: "Bolívar...was an indiscriminate womanizer. He pursued power for its own sake. He always lied when convenient [and] had no respect for law. He was rarely interested in the truth of what he said, merely its effect." "Walter Scott was one of the first historical novelists to take the trouble to get the details of dress, armor, architecture, and speech right when portraying an earlier age." This sort of accuracy is largely taken for granted today. Discussing Marx and those who influenced him: "The trouble with these determinist philosophers was that they were constantly changing their minds about what history was certain to do." "[August] Comte has some claims to be considered the worst writer who ever lived, and his works read just as badly...in French as in translation."

These are samples of the wealth of interesting tidbits and syntheses Paul Johnson puts in your hands with this book. He aims to tell the story of a particular epoch in a sensible way. He does so entertainingly and with respect for the human energy, inventiveness and self-reliance abroad in the world at a great era in history.