All changed, changed utterly;A terrible beauty is bornEaster 1916, W B YeatsTerrible Beauty presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris ' the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative. From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide. Review In this extremely ambitious book, Peter Watson has achieved a noteworthy success. Weaving together so many ideas and so many people responsible for them, this story of the 20th century is both informative and stimulating. It unfolds in a way that captures the reader's attention and never relinquishes its grasp. The range of topics, from the arts and sciences through philosophy and ideas, renders this work a colossal and intricate chain of events. The links are cleverly interwoven between the century's unimaginable horrors and extraordinary developments. From the characters and events which shaped Vienna for the arrival of art student Adolf Hitler in 1907, to the ongoing conflicts of the computer age, Terrible Beauty, as its title implies, demonstrates the Jekyll and Hyde nature of modern civilisation. An excellent work of reference and an exciting read. About the Author Peter Watson was born in 1943 and educated at the universities of Durham, London and Rome. He was deputy editor of New Society and spent four years as part of the 'Insight' team of The Sunday Times. He was New York correspondent of The Times and has written for the Observer, The New York Times, Punch and The Spectator. He is the author of thirteen books and has presented several television programmes about the arts. Since 1998 he has been a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, at the University of Cambridge.