Florian Illies. (2013). 1913: The Year Before the Storm. Melville House.

Florian Illies. 2013. 1913: The Year Before the Storm. Melville House.

Florian Illies, 1913: The Year Before the Storm. Melville House, 2013.

Florian Illies. 1913: The Year Before the Storm. Melville House, 2013.

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keywords

1. • value: literary history
2. • value: War
3. • value: music history
4. • value: Vienna
5. • value: WWI
6. • value: Mona Lisa
7. • value: art history
8. • value: germany
9. • value: European History
10. • value: Adolf Hitler
11. • value: World History
12. • value: Military
13. • value: 20th Century
14. • value: art
15. • value: Austria
16. • value: ww1
17. • value: Great War
18. • value: Artists
19. • value: world war 1
20. • value: Military History
21. • value: Louis Armstrong
22. • value: History
23. • value: World War I
24. • value: Berlin
25. • value: first world war
26. • value: Paris
27. • value: Franz Kafka
28. • value: wwi history
29. • value: gifts for dad
30. • value: vladimir lenin
31. • value: art books
32. • value: historical books
33. • value: gifts for history buffs
34. • value: history books for adults
35. • value: world war 1 books
36. • value: ww1 books
37. • value: military history books
38. • value: ww1 history
39. • value: dad gifts
40. • value: history buff gifts

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Illies, Florian
   • bioText: Florian Illies is a German journalist who has worked for major European newspapers and magazines and cofounded the art magazine Monopol. He is the author of four previous bestselling books, which have sold more than 1 million copies. 1913 is his first book to be translated into English.
      
     Shaun Whiteside’s translations include Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Robert Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless. Jamie Lee Searle’s recent translations include works by Ursula Poznanski, Frank Schatzing, and Dora Heldt.
   • name: Florian Illies
2. • role: Translator
   • fileAs: Whiteside, Shaun
   • name: Shaun Whiteside
3. • role: Translator
   • fileAs: Searle, Jamie Lee
   • name: Jamie Lee Searle

publishDate

2013-10-29T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

1913

fullDescription

International Bestseller: This “absolute gem of a book” offers a month-by-month account of the year before World War I—one of the most exciting times in the 20th century (The Observer).
“A sexy, comic and occasionally heartbreaking soap opera” for history buffs interested in 20th-century art, music, and literature (Washington Post).

It was the year Henry Ford first put a conveyer belt in his car factory, and the year Louis Armstrong first picked up a trumpet. It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract, and Coco Chanel and Prada opened their first dress shops. It was the year Proust began his opus, Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring, and the first Armory Show in New York introduced the world to Picasso and the world of abstract art. It was the year the recreational drug now known as ecstasy was invented.
It was 1913, the year before the world plunged into the catastrophic darkness of World War I.
In a witty yet moving narrative that progresses month by month through the year, and is interspersed with numerous photos and documentary artifacts (such as Kafka’s love letters), Florian Illies ignores the conventions of the stodgy tome so common in “one year” histories. Forefronting cultural matters as much as politics, he delivers a charming and riveting tale of a world full of hope and unlimited possibility, peopled with amazing characters and radical politics, bristling with new art and new technology—even as ominous storm clouds began to gather.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW
   • content: "A fascinating new structure of writing... With exceptional wit and understanding, Illies shows the societal and cultural changes propelling man toward modern art, new thought processes and war."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
   • content: "An utterly delicious treat or an ideal present for anyone even mildly interested in 20th-century art, music and literature....a sexy, comic and occasionally heartbreaking soap opera.... an irresistible book, excellently translated and packed with factoids and surprising encounters."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Weekly Standard
   • content: "Illies's stylish evocation of 1913 is thrilling entertainment for those who have heard it all before but wish to experience--one more time, perhaps--the bleary-eyed ecstasy that is the result of staying up all night reading a book in one sitting."
4. • premium: False
   • source: PopMatters
   • content: "Interactive and full of vigorous energy as moments intertwine, and connections one rarely contemplates in the same context are finally connected... With confidence the text reverberates through the following years by offering a new perspective on the roots of the 20th century... A welcome presence on any book shelf."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
   • content: "The rich range of subjects, the vibrancy of the writing, here translated by Whiteside and Searle, and the intimate details of the biographies all make this a fast-paced and engrossing read... Highly recommended."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Juliet Nicolson, The Daily Telegraph
   • content: "Already an international bestseller, German author Florian Illies's 1913: The Year Before the Storm is an absolute gem of a book. His snapshot approach to the year, recorded month by month, is the most original historical account I've come across . . . Illies' genius turn of phrase, beautifully retained by Shaun Whiteside and Jamie Lee Searle's elegant translation, can be found throughout . . . The entries read like history's footnotes, but as anyone who's read Freud knows, the footnotes always tell the best story." --Lucy Scholes, The Observer "An entertaining and illuminating study." --Shirley Whiteside, The Independent "A hugely enjoyable idiosyncratic month-by-month narrative, in which the frenzy of artistic activity in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Trieste is conveyed with vigour and humour."
7. • premium: False
   • source: The Financial Times
   • content: "A vivid, richly textured book that chronicles a world crackling with talent, energy and foreboding. The pace and scale of activity is at times breathtaking . . . Illies' talent is to weave all this together in a way that keeps the reader with him."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
   • content: "This highly entertaining month-by-month account of 1913 . . . is rich in detail, humour and vivid pen portraits . . . 1913 is the best possible holiday read--or gift--as it is so enjoyable, yet the breadth of information and astute insight will prevent one feeling guilty of indulgence."
9. • premium: False
   • source: The Guardian
   • content: "Illies is as astute a researcher as he is an observer of the zeitgeist . . . Reads like something out of a magic realist novel."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Die Welt
    • content: "Illies shapes his material not as a scholar, but as a wordsmith, as a story-teller with a strong sense for dramatic effect and composition . . . The most enjoyable book I've read in years."
11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from October 15, 2013
      In his first English-language translation, German author Illies scours the landscape of the year 1913, making a leap into a fascinating new structure of writing. The author uses excerpts from journals of now-famous people in the capitals of modernism, including Vienna, Munich, Paris and Berlin. He explains their ideas and snatches quotes and tosses them apparently willy-nilly into chronological chapters. However, due to the author's creative talent, the structure of the narrative works like a charm. Among the many events that occurred during that year: Franz Kafka wrote bizarre letters to his love, Felice Bauer; the Die Brucke group of expressionist artists stumbled toward collapse; Hitler sold a few watercolors; Stalin remained in exile; the Mona Lisa was still missing; James Joyce was teaching English in Trieste, Italy; and Gustav Mahler's widow, Alma, was refusing to marry Oskar Kokoschka unless he painted her in a masterpiece. Though the narrative may seem disjointed at first, readers will continue to turn the pages to see what becomes of Thomas Mann and his brother or to see Carl Jung daring to challenge Freud's theories. Illies happily neglects all the political stirrings that would lead to war the following year. Instead, he follows members of the modernist arts, with Marcel Proust touching a nerve of the avant-garde and Mann exploring tormented passions in Death in Venice. Also included: Ezra Pound contacts Joyce, Kafka broods, Albert Camus is born in Algeria, and 15-year-old Bertolt Brecht has a cold. With exceptional wit and understanding, Illies shows the societal and cultural changes propelling man toward modern art, new thought processes and war. An excellent companion to Keith Jackson's equally illuminating Constellation of Genius (2013), which gives similar treatment to the year 1922.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from November 15, 2013
      

      Although some in Europe were superstitious that 1913 would be an unlucky year, it proved to be one of change, possibility, and progress. German journalist Illies vividly re-creates Western society before the war by constructing a month-by-month narrative made up of quirky snippets about happenings of all sorts--cultural, technological, biographical. In some ways it was a world brimming with newness and optimism--modern art was emerging, geothermia was being discovered, a drug later nicknamed "ecstasy" was synthesized, Detroit rolled out its first assembly line, and the Federal Reserve was founded. Geniuses abounded: Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sigmund Freud, and D.H. Lawrence. Albert Schweitzer was planning to visit Africa. While culture takes center stage in this microhistory, readers are also alerted to portents of political trouble: Stalin was in Vienna, soon to meet Trotsky, while Hitler was painting watercolors and looking for his big break. Some, such as Rudolf Steiner, felt that "the war keeps threatening to come." Others were sure it could not happen. The rich range of subjects, the vibrancy of the writing, here translated by Whiteside and Searle, and the intimate details of the biographies all make this a fast-paced and engrossing read. VERDICT For general readers interested in history, art, culture, and literature. Highly recommended.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

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International Bestseller: This “absolute gem of a book” offers a month-by-month account of the year before World War I—one of the most exciting times in the 20th century (The Observer).
“A sexy, comic and occasionally heartbreaking soap opera” for history buffs interested in 20th-century art, music, and literature (Washington Post).

It was the year Henry Ford first put a conveyer belt in his car factory, and the year Louis Armstrong first picked up a trumpet. It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract, and Coco Chanel and Prada opened their first dress shops. It was the year Proust began his opus, Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring, and the first Armory Show in New York introduced the world to Picasso and the world of abstract art. It was the year the recreational drug now known as ecstasy was invented.
It was 1913, the year before the world plunged into the catastrophic...

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