The Last Gentlemen

A Thread of Years, by John Lukacs (Yale, 481 pp., $30)

Beginning with 1901 and proceeding through the century a year at a time until he arrives at 1969, he sketches a two-or three-page, usually fictional, vignette, meant to be in some way representative of the year, and then offers a two-or three-page dissection of it in the form of a dialogue between himself and an imaginary interlocutor, pointing out the vignette’s various significances. The only common element linking the chapters is the character of Kensington, or K., “a Philadelphian gentleman” born with the century, episodes from whose remarkably uneventful life account for about one in four of the vignettes. K. is a cultivated man and a minor painter who was present at none of the great scenes of our century’s drama. Yet Lukacs makes him embody the century as much as Hitler, Stalin, or Roosevelt.

About the Author

James Bowman

A Thread of Years, by John Lukacs (Yale, 481 pp., $30)

Beginning with 1901 and proceeding through the century a year at a time until he arrives at 1969, he sketches a two-or three-page, usually fictional, vignette, meant to be in some way representative of the year, and then offers a two-or three-page dissection of it in the form of a dialogue between himself and an imaginary interlocutor, pointing out the vignette’s various significances. The only common element linking the chapters is the character of Kensington, or K., “a Philadelphian gentleman” born with the century, episodes from whose remarkably uneventful life account for about one in four of the vignettes. K. is a cultivated man and a minor painter who was present at none of the great scenes of our century’s drama. Yet Lukacs makes him embody the century as much as Hitler, Stalin, or Roosevelt.