There’s a lot to love here, and I’m not ashamed to admit that Higgs had me from the first page. The first five or six chapters are bold and insightful. I highly recommend them. Unfortunately the deeper he moves into the twentieth century the more he loses the thread and his thesis collapses. While I’m on board with the passages about LSD, chaos, and postmodernism, the chapters on Science Fiction and Nihilism are just stupid and the examples he offers don’t hold up. Also, why would a discussion of the Beat Generation rest almost entirely on Scottish novels? The book is pretty Eurocentric and except for a few sentences on China and the Ottoman Empire ignores the East almost entirely. My biggest problem with much of this book is that even though it is premised on a strong and interesting central idea, Higgs shoves too many square pegs into round holes. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the introduction to Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.