Just as the 20th century dawned with an unparalleled optimism regarding
the moral, social and scientific progress of humanity, it ended with an
unshakeable confidence in the promises of technology and the power of
free-market economics to deliver a better life for all humankind. British
journalist Watson's (War on the Mind; The Caravaggio Conspiracy; etc.)
panoramic survey traces various 20th-century ideas and their power
to bend and shape society and individuals. At a frenetic pace, he gallops
through the modern intellectual landscape, pausing long enough to graze
the founts of philosophy (from Wittgenstein to Richard Rorty to Alasdair
MacIntyre), literature (Kafka, Woolf, Mann, Rushdie), literary criticism
(F.R. Leavis to Jacques Derrida), art (Picasso to Warhol), economics
(Milton Friedman to John Kenneth Galbraith), science (Linus Pauling
to E.O. Wilson) and film (D.W. Griffiths to Fran?ois Truffaut). He also
briefly examines the significance of a wide range of political and
cultural movements, such as socialism, communism, fascism, feminism and
environmentalism. Watson's rich narrative covers every corner of
intellectual life in the 20th century, yet the style is so breezy and
anecdotal that it lacks the deep learned elegance of a history of ideas
by, for example, Isaiah Berlin or Jacques Barzun. Unfortunately, for all
the book's breadth, Watson's workmanlike approach has the feel of
a handful of school assignments cobbled together from encyclopedia
articles rather than of work drawn from years of thoughtful reflection
and an intimate acquaintance with, and love of, ideas.

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