دانلود کتاب In the Beginning: The Advent of the Modern Age, Europe in the 1840s

"The most amazing epoch the world has yet seen": So Jerome Blum characterizes the 1840s, the decade when the modern era began. It was the fruit of the creative endeavors of a unique generation of geniuses then reaching maturity. In 1840, Dickens was 28, Marx 22, Engels 20, Bismarck 25, Turgenev 22, Dostoyevsky 29, Darwin 31, Helmholtz 19, Thackeray 29, Courbet 21 & Cavour 30. Filled with youthful self-confidence, this generation sought change in every sphere of life. Revolution occurred throughout society--in communications & transportation via the telegraph, railways, steamships, photography, global mail; in social relations with the dawning of social consciousness among the upper classes & the emergence of radical social movements; in science with the unprecedented discoveries of the physical world; in the arts with the new Realism. Blum focuses on the five dominant European powers, Great Britain, France, Austria, Germany & Russia. Each in its own way underwent immense political change as autocratic absolutism began to give way & early steps were taken toward the modern welfare state. Besides its intellectual rigor, what makes In the Beginning engrossing is his skill in portraying key individuals responsible for the changes & those who opposed them--colorful figures like Michael Faraday, Auguste Comte, Robert Peel, Tsar Nicholas I, Giuseppe Mazzini, Friedrich List, Lord Ashley, George Hudson, Etienne Cabet, Pierre Proudhon, Rowland Hill, Vissarion Belinsky etc. In the Beginning is a triumph of perceptive scholarship by a leading historian.
Introduction
Revolution in communications
Reformers & radicals
Romanticism, nationalism, realism
World of learning
Great Britain: a new era
France comes full circle
Austria: empire of silence & stagnation
Germany on the threshold of greatness
Russia: autocracy % intelligentsia
Epilogue
Notes
List of Works Cited
Index