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"On or about December 1910 human nature changed.   All human relations shifted, and when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.”

Final of a 3-part series based on the book "Rites of Spring:  The Great War and the Birth of the  Modern Age" by Modris Ekstiens,  about the evolution of the modernist spirit in Western Europe.  This episode explores how the modernist spirit developed through the optimism and relaxing of social norms of the "Roaring 20s", through to its final perverted expression in Fascism and Nazism.

To explore further:

• Book overview of 1930s The Dark Valley 
• Film clip Dinosaur sequence in Fantasia (1940)
• Wikipedia on Italian futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
• Book Postliberal Politics: The Coming Era of Renewal

Email feedback and suggestions to talkingmodernism@gmail.com

Photo credit:  Charles Lindbergh, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.