"Five Faces of Modernity" is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: "modernity," "avant-garde," "decadence," "kitsch," and "postmodernism." The concept of modernity--the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours--is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural...