Introduction: In Search of the Lost Generation 1. France: The Young Men of Today 2. Germany: The Mission of the Young Generation 3. England: Lost Legions of Youth 4. Spain: The Theme of Our Time 5. Italy: Giovinezza! Giovinezza! 6. Wanderers between Two Worlds
Robert Wohl is Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles.
Although so different in subject and approach, the originality and
absorbing freshness with which this study is written creates
something of the excitement which one felt when one discovered
Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station or J. L. Lowes's The Road to
Xanadu. It tells how, 'round about 1880, all over Europe and in
Britain, the word 'generation' ceased to mean what it had done for
centuries ... and came to mean 'youth' and its special values,
energies, repudiations and abilities. According to the myth . . .
this 'generation' had no sooner . . . shown itself full of a
promise . . . than it got 'lost' in the Flanders mudbath prepared
for it by wily old men (and women). Mr. Wohl gives a tart synopsis
of this romantic simplification, and provides us with an altogether
nobler, often absurd and dangerous, and finally more enthralling
scene.
*The Listener*
This is a work of broad and impeccable scholarship...Succinct,
lucid, and superbly written, it is the best history to deal with
the problem of generation...[Wohl's] talent for incisive
portraiture is remarkable.
*New Republic*
A superb work of cultural history, a study of lives lived and
sensibilities formed in the shadow of war and upheaval.
*Foreign Affairs*
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