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How have modern Europeans understood the times in which they live? Many accounts of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe tend to emphasize degeneration or acceleration - a return to the past, or the rush to the future. This volume, however, shows how writers, artists, politicians and sociologists brought the present into focus by re-casting time in terms of human experience. With fresh contributions from history, politics, literary studies, musicology, cultural studies and art history, it shows how the search for the human present defined the culture, politics and ideas of Western Europe from the 1860s to the 1930s. The pressing search for the human present uncovered in these essays is, if anything, of even greater relevance today.