How have modern Europeans understood the times in which they live? Many accounts of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe tend to emphasize degeneration or acceleration - the past, or the rush to the future. This volume, however, shows how writers, artists, politicians, andsociologists brought the present into focus by re-casting time in terms of human experience. With fresh contributions from history, politics, literary studies, musicology, cultural studies, and art history, it shows how the search for the human present defined the culture, politics, and ideas ofWestern Europe from the 1860s to the 1930s. The volume recasts the 'long' fin de siecle as a period when European politics, society, and art was seeking a new balance between human experience and the idea of change. The pressing search for the human present uncovered in these essays is, if anything, of even greater relevance today. | Time On A Human Scale by Julian Wright, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters