Finished Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom review copied and pasted

>4.5/5 rounding up for Goodreads. I really liked it and would recommend it to anyone interested in the interwar period. I also liked it a lot more than Blom's earlier book The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 as it has more politics. Possibly one of the better history books I've read in 2022.

>The basic style of the book is that each year is a chapter and an event from that year is used to talk about and analyze a specific theme across the whole period. So 1918 is the end of WWI so the chapter is a lot about trauma, the impact of so many dead or crippled and the feeling of a 'lost generation' which affected the whole period, 1920 uses the beginning of prohibition to talk about prohibition across the whole 20s and its impact on morality etc. It's not an 'X happened then Y happened' sort of book. There is a good mix of cultural, scientific (the Scopes Monkey trial about teaching evolution in 1925 for example), ideological (1919 chapter starts with D'Annunzio's capture of Fiume so it is about the beginning of fascist movements and other conservative views like Spengler's Decline of the West) and political topics. The author is good at bringing the cultural and scientific topics back to how people felt politically and how they responded to the changes of the 20s and 30s. Morality and the reaction to the new movements, arts and lifestyles get a lot of mention in the book. .There isn't really anything about international politics between countries, aside from the 1937 chapter on the Spanish Civil War but I like the focus on the other stuff for a change. Despite the title saying it is focused on the west there is still quite a bit on the Soviet Union, with the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion (the theme is failed leftwing or worker uprisings, Germany's communist March Action and the USA's Battle of Blair Mountain is also mentioned), the beginning of the 5 year plans (mainly focused around the founding of the steel plant at Magnitogorsk) and the holodomor. The writing style is very good and the descriptions/depictions are also very good for things like the Dust Bowl in the USA.

Now for a shorter military history book - They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner. Mostly focusing on the soldier's personal experiences. Enjoying it so far and have finished the chapter on 1914.