Stranger Than We Can Imagine
Making Sense of the Twentieth Century
The extraordinary story of the 20th century, as told from the furthest fringes of science, art and culture. For readers of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.
Before 1900, history was an account of great discoveries that actually made sense. People understand innovations like the steam engine, agriculture, or electricity. The twentieth century, by contrast, gave us quantum entanglement, cubism, relativity, psychedelics, postmodernism, chaos maths, and the Somme.
This is the story of that confusing century as told through the ideas produced at the furthest fringes of our sciences, arts, and culture. Its cast includes well-known geniuses such as Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, and Pablo Picasso, lesser known geniuses like Edward Lorenz, Sergey Korolyov, or Shigeru Miyamoto, and infamous…
$22.00
November 1, 2016JOHN HIGGS is the author of The 20th Century: An Alternative History (2015). His previous books include The Brandy of the Damned, I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, and The KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds. He also makes animation and has directed and produced over 100 episodes of pre-school British TV in the last five years, which allows him to spend his days thinking like a four-year-old. He was raised in Wales, which explains a lot, but can now usually be found in Brighton, England, where he lives with his wife and their two children.
Stranger Than We Can Imagine
John Higgs