SOURCE: “The Day before Yesterday,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 2, 1991, p. 9.

In the following review, Seheuer expresses disdain for Johnson's conservatism but praises The Birth of the Modern as “a profoundly, persistently, maddeningly interesting work.”

What on earth does Paul Johnson mean by the Modern and World Society? The terms seem almost too broad to have meaning.

Over the last two centuries, Western society has changed radically in every respect in technology and commerce, art and intellect, popular government and private morals; through nationalism, colonialism, genocide. Science has journeyed to outer space and inside the atom. To isolate a brief, early period of transition would seem futile and misguided. But while The Birth of the Modern is many things—possibly too many—misguided isn't one of them.

Johnson, the author of such works as Modern Times, A History of the Jews and A History of the...