Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918–1939

Many scholars view World Wars I and II as one conflict with a peaceful interlude. In his follow-up to The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West 1900–1914, Blom argues that the 21 years separating the conflicts are more properly viewed as a continuation of the same war "by other means." By this, Blom intends that the early 20th century is a story of a great cultural clash between conservatism and modernism. The two world wars were brutal manifestations of that discord and the period in the middle was filled with relatively calm displays of that same conflict. Even so, these social tensions frequently exploded into violence across Europe and the United States during this time. Blom investigates some of the highlights of the era, such as the Russian Civil War, the rise of fascism, and the Great Depression, but he mostly looks at often neglected aspects of the age, such as the popularization of jazz, the Scopes Monkey Trial, and Europe's experimental artistic movements.