Volume 41, Number 1 & 2 · January 13, 1994
The Age of Aggression
By Noel Annan
The Cultivation of Hatred
by Peter Gay
Norton, 685 pp., $30.00
Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe
edited by Jürgen Kocka, edited by Allen Mitchell
Berg Publishers, 468 pp., $74.00
Was the nineteenth-century bourgeois citizen a staid, buttoned-up, lawabiding creature? Not according to Peter Gay. One emotion above all others, he claims, governed the behavior of the middle classes in America, Britain, France, and Germany: aggression. Whether it was politics, trade, competition in industry, snobbery, boasting, self-advertisement, or gossip, the object was to score off one's adversary and put him down. The thwarted felt frustrated and worked it off in further aggression. Even those who did not express aggression in their actions felt it in their hearts; and it spilled over into their diaries.
Review, 3777 words
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