In this bold new book, Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth traces the broadly established challenges to modernity that now confront historians and citizens of Western societies generally. She puts forward a clear definition of both The Modern Condition and of The Discursive Condition that challenges it, and she briefly introduces the most important practical implications of those challenges to accepted definitions and tools of thought.

After decades of conflicting work on related issues this book provides a succinct, lucid and wide-ranging discussion of what is at stake. Drawing on a broad range...