1930: Europe in the Shadow of the Beast

by Arthur Haberman

The year 1930 can be seen as the dawn of a period of darkness, the beginning of a decade that Auden would style “low, dishonest.” That year was one of the most reflective moments in modernity. After the optimism of the nineteenth century, the West had stumbled into war in 1914. It managed to survive a conflagration, but it failed in the aftermath to create something valued.


In 1930, Europe was questioning itself and its own viability. Where are we heading? a number of public intellectuals asked. Who are we and how do we build moral social and political structures? Can we continue to believe in the insights and healing quality of our culture? Major thinkers—Mann, Woolf, Ortega, Freud, Brecht, Nardal, and Huxley— as well as a number of artists, including Picasso and Magritte, and musicians, such as Weill, sought to grapple with issues that remain central to our lives


the viability of a secular Europe with Enlightenment values

coming to terms with a darker view of human nature
mass culture and its dangers; the rise of the politics of irrationality

identity and the “other” in Western civilization

new ways to represent the postwar world

the epistemological dilemma in a world of uncertainty; and

the new Fascism—was it a new norm or an aberration?

Arthur Haberman sees 1930 as a watershed year in the intellectual life of Europe and with this book, the first to see the contributions of the public intellectuals of 1930 as a single entity, he forces a reconsideration and reinterpretation of the period.

266 pages, Paperback

Published September 25, 2018

About the author

Arthur Haberman is University Professor Emeritus of History and Humanities at York University. He is the author of The Making of the Modern Age, and the co-author of Private Lives/Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and The West and the World: Contacts, Conflicts, Connections. He is also the editor and senior author of Civilizations: A Cultural Atlas and the editor or co-editor of three anthologies. Most recently, he is the author of 1930: Europe in the Shadow of the Beast, published in September 2018.

Arthur Haberman has done extensive work for the National Humanities Faculty in the United States and for the Advanced Placement Program in European History. He is the recipient of a number of teaching awards, including from York University, the Ontario Confederation of University Teaching Associations, and the 3M Award from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Canada. In 1998 Now Magazine designated him the Best Professor in Toronto.

In retirement, in addition to continuing his scholarly work, Arthur Haberman began writing mysteries set in contemporary Toronto. The first, Wild Justice, was published in 2018. A sequel, Social Justice,
will be published in March, 2019.