Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern: 9 (Berkeley Series in British Studies) - Softcover

Vernon, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520282043 ISBN 13: 9780520282049

Publisher: University of California Press, 2010

Synopsis

What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern? In Distant Strangers, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers. Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.

About this title

Product Description:

Distant Strangers

Review:

"Commands--and deserves to command--the attention of scholars."--Martin Hewitt"American Historical Review" (06/01/2015)

"This is a project of great scope and ambition... [Vernon's] book ought to enthuse, stimulate, provoke."--Journal of Modern History

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0520282043
• ISBN 13: 9780520282049
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184