Streetlife : The Untold History of Europe's Twentieth Century

The twentieth century in Europe was an urban century: it was shaped by life in, and the view from, the street. Women were not liberated in legislatures, but liberated themselves in factories, homes, nightclubs, and shops. Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini made themselves powerful by making cities ungovernable with riots rampaging through streets, bars occupied one-by-one. New forms of privacy and isolation were not simply a by-product of prosperity, but because people planned new ways of living, new forms of housing in suburbs and estates across the continent. Our proudest cultural achievements lie not in our galleries or state theatres, but in our suburban TV sets, the dance halls, pop music played in garages, and hip hop sung on our estates. In Streetlife , Leif Jerram presents a totally new history of the twentieth century, with the city at its heart, showing how everything distinctive about the century, from revolution and dictatorship to sexual liberation, was fundamentally shaped by the great urban centres which defined it. "The twentieth century in Europe was an urban century: it was shaped by life in, and the view from, the street. Women were not liberated in legislatures, but liberated themselves in factories, homes, nightclubs, and shops. Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini made themselves powerful by making cities ungovernable with riots rampaging through streets, bars occupied one-by-one. New forms of privacy and isolation were not simply a by-product of prosperity, but because people planned new ways of living, new forms of housing in suburbs and estates across the continent. Our proudest cultural achievements lie not in our galleries or state theatres, but in our suburban TV sets, the dance halls, pop music played in garages, and hip hop sung on our estates. In Streetlife, Leif Jerram presents a totally new history of the twentieth century, with the city at its heart, showing how everything distinctive about the century, from revolution and dictatorship to sexual liberation, was fundamentally shaped by the great urban centres which defined it" -- Oxford University Press Cover 1 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 Introduction: The Untold History of Europe’s Twentieth Century 12 1. Revolution in the Streets 25 2. No Place for a Lady? 112 3. The Cultured Metropolis 184 4. Sex and the City 258 5. Building Utopia: How Cities Shaped our Lives and our Minds 328 6. Epilogue: The Way We Live Now? 396 Notes 422 Bibliography 436 Publishers Acknowledgements 474 Photographic Acknowledgements 476 Index 478 A 478 B 478 C 479 D 480 E 480 F 480 G 481 H 482 I 482 J 483 K 483 L 483 M 483 N 484 O 485 P 485 Q 485 R 485 S 486 T 487 U 487 V 487 W 487 Z 488 A completely new look at the history of Europe over the last one hundred years, showing how the fabric of everyday life and the major political upheavals of the twentieth century were fundamentally shaped by the culture and environment of the city