Ezra Pound referred to 1922 as Year One of a new era. It was the year in which a skinny, shabby Irishman and a natty, quietly sinister American entered the cultural landscape, hell-bent on exploding everything that realistic fiction and Georgian poetry held dear. It began with Ulysses and ended with the publication of The Waste Land: the most influential English-language novel and the poem of the century. Kevin Jackson lights up the frenzy of innovation that marked the beginnings of our modern age.