"Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age". Some reviews of the 1989 book by Modris Eksteins

We believe we have to go beyond this Centenary mood to discover those that up to now remain the best books about World War One. This climate is indeed unfavourable to the conception of new studies able to go deeply inside a widely debated argument. It is not hard to understand the reason of this discomfortable situation, since the anniversary becomes often the excuse to spice or even to drug the premises and the expectations as well. For this reason, as far as our look goes, we can easily admit that no groundbreaking approach in the study of the First World War and no history book able to break with the tradition has been released in the last years (of course we hope something is going to happen). Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age is a book by Modris Eksteins first published in 1989 by Houghton Mifflin. Today, instead of offering a new review of this book we simply link the most interesting reviews one can find online.

Rites of Spring, Rites of Destruction
CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

Notes of reading Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring
PHILIP JENKINS

Review: Rites of Spring
ROBERT THOMPSON

Modernism & Its Consequences
JOHN P. SISK
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1990/03/002-modernism-its-consequences