So you think you know what makes the world go round? Read about the ideas that revolutionized the twentieth century.

The twentieth century was a period of seismic change on a global scale, witnessing two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, the establishment of a global economy, the beginnings of global warming and a complete reversal in the status of women in large parts of the world.

Many of these changes were brought about thanks to "big ideas" that irrevocably altered the way humans viewed their world. Short Histories of Big Ideas are brief, easy-to-understand introductions to the concepts that shaped the twentieth century. Each volume explains the key aspects of an idea and provides a concise history of its growth and influence on our world perspective.

.,."a sweeping overview of the varieties of modernism and modernist works that have become part of contemporary culture and consciousness. Moving with ease across genres and national borders, Walz guides us through the aesthetics, social projects, and historical contexts of leading modernists and their works." Prof Charles Rearick, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Can art change the world?

The modernist movements of the early twentieth century launched a cultural revolution without which the multi-media-driven world in which we live today would not have been possible. Today modernism is enshrined in art galleries and university courses. Its techniques of abstraction and montage, and its creative impulse to innovate and shock, are the stock-in-trade of commercial advertising, feature films, television and computer-generated graphics.

In this concise cultural history, Robin Walz vividlyrecaptures what was revolutionary about modernism. He shows how an aesthetic concept, arising from a diversity of cultural movements, from Cubism and Bauhaus to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and operating in different ways across the fields of art, literature, music, design and architecture, came to turn intellectual and cultural life and assumptions upside down, first in Europe and then around the world.

From the nineteenth century origins of modernism to its postmodern legacies, this book will give the reader access to the big picture of modernism as a dynamic historical process and an unfinished project which still speaks to our times.

Robin Walz (Associate Professor of History, University of Alaska) is an intellectual and cultural historian and the author of "Pulp Surrealism: Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Paris" (2000).

A clear, readable and jargon-free introduction to the main features and contributions of Modernism.

• Gives the reader access to the "big picture" of modernism as a historical process.
• Clearly demonstrates the evolution of modernism from a range of cultural movements.
• Gives a clear impression of how the modernist movement has influenced practically every aspect of the world we live in today.