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The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture Audiobook
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Publisher Description
From the “master of historical narrative” (Financial Times), a dazzling, richly detailed, panoramic work—the first to document the genesis of a continent-wide European culture
The nineteenth century in Europe was the first age of cultural globalization—an epoch when mass communications and high-speed rail travel brought Europe together, overcoming national barriers and creating a truly pan-European canon of artistic, musical, and literary works. By 1900, people across the continent were reading the same books, looking at the same art, and attending the same opera performances.
Acclaimed historian Orlando Figes moves from Parisian salons to German spa towns to Russian country houses, exploring the interplay of money and art that made this unification possible. At the book’s center is an intimate love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot; and her husband Louis Viardot, a connoisseur and political activist. Their passionate, ambitious lives caught up an astonishing array of artists and princes, poets, composers, and impresarios—Delacroix, Chopin, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among them.
As Figes observes, nearly all of civilization’s great advances have come when people, ideas, and artistic creations circulate freely between nations. Surprising, beautifully written, spanning a continent and a century, The Europeans offers the first international history of European culture—and a compelling argument for the benefits of cosmopolitanism.
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“Figes zeros in on nineteenth-century Europe, a time of technological innovation and globalization that he believes helped the Continent coalesce around shared values, art and sensibilities…With the future of Brexit and the European Union still uncertain, the book, which makes the case that a common European culture once existed and thrived, is doubly relevant today.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Vividly written and meticulously detailed, this book will please lovers of the history of literature and music, at the very least.”
— Library Journal (starred review) -
“Figes’s…deep grasp of the characters and of technology-driven societal upheaval make this cultural history of Europe in the nineteenth century fascinating, even indispensable.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“Magnificent. Beautifully written, immaculately researched, and thoroughly absorbing from start to finish. A tour de force that explains how Europe’s cultural life transformed during the course of the nineteenth century—and so much more.”
— Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World -
“[An] excellent, wide-ranging history of nineteenth-century Europe.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A powerful and essential addition to our understanding of European history and culture.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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A New York Times Pick of the Month
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About Orlando Figes
Orlando Figes is the author of many acclaimed books on Russian history. His books have been translated into over thirty languages. He is a professor of history at Birkbeck College, London University.
About James Langton
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.