| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945. By Bernhard Rieger (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2005. x + 319 pp.).

Turn the pages of any illustrated weekly newspaper published in a European city in the 1920s or 1930s, and you will find them splashed with images of airplanes, pilots, ocean liners, and film stars. These were the items that indexed the idea of changing times, which was the way the contemporary moment was experienced. As Bernhard Rieger shows, European designers were well aware that the "ultra modern" one day would be the very datable sign of obsolescence the next and that product lines existed to be improved. Technological improvements burst on the scene as modern-day "wonders," Rieger argues, but the ebullience of progress was edged with a sense of uncertainty about what actually had been accomplished. Yet the sheer prevalence of the images of technological achievement indicates a more basic confidence in the promise of technology to improve social existence; the very mechanical and material nature of machinery seemed to affirm the plasticity and malleability of the universe. Even a perception of risk and the acknowledgement of jeopardy indicated the transformative powers of technology. Indeed, the two most radical regimes in the years between the two world wars, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, were also among the most enthralled with the imagery of technological prowess. In this broadly conceived book, Bernhard Rieger touches on all these themes, but never quite finds his way.

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