I have just read 1913, The Year Before the Storm by Florian Illies, about the year before the word changed.
As a follow-up, I read Year Zero, the History of 1945 by Ian Buruma which is even more interesting and indicative of how the U.S.A. has changed character.
Year Zero, which is superb, belongs to a vigorous expression of interest in 1945, elaborated also very well by the late Tony Judt in "Postwar," Anne Applebaum in "Iron Curtain," Modris Eksteins in "Walking Since Daybreak," and Keith Lowe in "Savage Continent," which Americans (such as I) seemed then, and still, to have shut out of consciousness, given the extreme suffering of the continent and East. I think the book is excellent, yet almost unpardonably overdue. One has to think that no one after Year Zero (the time, not the text) had the right not to predict the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, just to cite one example of that history's being re-lived. It's especially encouraging to find the book referenced at this blog, which many would excuse for ignoring it. Finally, I owe the discovery of this blog to "Blue Remembered Hills," a colleague of yours of great conscience.
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