Rather than reducing 1913 to either its most frivolous or to its most destructive features, Charles Emmerson proposes a different and more expansive portrait of 1913; a year in which a truly global society was emerging for the first time in human history. Through stories of cities from Detroit to Bombay, Winnipeg to Durban, Tokyo to Algiers he reminds us of the true nature of the times: optimistic, modern and internationalist as much as pessimistic, archaic and nationalist.