Not a simple narrative style, but it captures very well the radicalism, energy, imagination and eclecticism, as well as the (sometimes violent) clashes and controversy surrounding Dada from its emergence in 1916. The book illuminates the rejection by Dada of the Modernists and Soviet socialist realism, and the schism with the emergent Surrealists, that came to a head around 1923. Dada was borne out of the profound disillusionment following the madness of WW1. With its rejection of bourgeois taste, hierarchy, convention and politics of any kind, Dada inevitably contained the seeds of its own destruction (if it was to remain true to itself). The supplementary section, with correspondence (some letters from key players looking back, decades after the events) plus poems by the leading figures of Dada adds richness. In Dada one can find the origins of the approaches and attitudes of much that calls itself "contemporary", in today's art world.