The Morbid Age
  • Published: 9 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9780141003252
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

The Morbid Age

Britain and the Crisis of Civilisation, 1919 - 1939

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9 Jul 2010
Paperback
9 Jul 2010
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'The Morbid Age is history at its best' Economist

British intellectual life between the wars stood at the heart of modernity. The Morbid Age opens a window on to this creative but anxious era, the golden age of the public intellectual and scientist: Arnold Toynbee, Aldous and Julian Huxley, H. G. Wells, Marie Stopes and a host of others. Yet, as Richard Overy argues, a striking characteristic of so many of the ideas that emerged from this new age - from eugenics to Freud's unconscious, to modern ideas of pacifism and world government - was the fear that the West was facing a possibly terminal crisis of civilization. Ultimately, Overy shows, the coming of war was almost welcomed as a way to resolve the contradictions and anxieties of this period, a war in which it was believed civilization would be either saved or utterly destroyed.
  • Published: 9 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9780141003252
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

About the author

Richard Overy

Richard Overy is Professor in History at the University of Exeter. Formerly Professor of Modern History at King's College, London, his books include William Morris, Viscount Nuffield The Air War, 1939-1945 Dictators, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, The Nazi Economic Recovery, 1932-1938, Goering: The Iron Man All Our Working Lives (with Peter Pagnamenta), The Origins Of The Second World War, The Road To War (with Andrew Wheatcroft), War And Economy In The Third Reich, The Inter-War Crisis, 1919-1939, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945, and The Battle: Summer 1940. He is a fellow of the British Academy and winner of the Wolfson History Prize in 2005.

Also by Richard Overy

Blood and Ruins
Why The Allies Won
The Dictators
Rain of Ruin
Why War?
The Birth of the RAF, 1918
The Bombing War
See all

Praise for The Morbid Age

Wonderfully compelling ... never less than a delight to read ... supremely well informed, thoughtful and enjoyable

Dominic Sandbrook, Evening Standard

Overy is one of the great historians of the second world war

Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

It's difficult to do justice to the richness of Overy's account

Noel Malcolm, Saturday Telegraph

It is hard to imagine anyone recording these times more exactly and more intelligently, or with greater insight and scholarship, than Overy has in this book

Simon Heffer, Telegraph

a rewarding book, and a highly readable one

John Gross, Standpoint