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Review of Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century (Slavic Review)

Press/Media: Research

Description

"At just shy of six hundred pages, it is a commitment to read, but it never feels too long, because Sayer’s prose is always vivid and engaging. The level of detail in the author’s knowledge of Czech cultural history is impressive, and his enthusiasm for its avant-garde artistic movements is genuine and unmistakable. The book is also gorgeously produced and beautifully illustrated with 62 striking halftones."

But finds "the book’s argument and methodology ... highly problematic ... In the end, Sayer’s book, while refreshing in its originality and bold in its scale, founders on the rocks of its own grand ambitions. It does succeed prodigiously, however, in demonstrating that the Czech modernist and avant-garde movements deserve to be taken as seriously as their western European counterparts, even if for most of the twentieth century Prague was merely the capital of Czechoslovakia."

Period1/06/2014
  • Derek Sayer

"At just shy of six hundred pages, it is a commitment to read, but it never feels too long, because Sayer’s prose is always vivid and engaging. The level of detail in the author’s knowledge of Czech cultural history is impressive, and his enthusiasm for its avant-garde artistic movements is genuine and unmistakable. The book is also gorgeously produced and beautifully illustrated with 62 striking halftones."

But finds "the book’s argument and methodology ... highly problematic ... In the end, Sayer’s book, while refreshing in its originality and bold in its scale, founders on the rocks of its own grand ambitions. It does succeed prodigiously, however, in demonstrating that the Czech modernist and avant-garde movements deserve to be taken as seriously as their western European counterparts, even if for most of the twentieth century Prague was merely the capital of Czechoslovakia."

References

TitleFeatured review: Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century
Media name/outletSlavic Review Vol. 73, No. 2, 2014, 378-381
Date1/06/14
Producer/AuthorThomas Ort
PersonsDerek Sayer