SOURCE: Allen, James Sloan. “Pursuing the Elusive ‘Why?’” New Leader 60, no. 2 (17 January 1977): 20–21.

In the following review, Allen asserts that Art and Act offers a useful new perspective on modernism and modernists.

It is impossible to think of history and not think of causes. Do governments fail for nothing? Do people act by chance? Surely not. Yet the “imperious Why?” baffles us; as Peter Gay says, “cause is a conjurer, concealing tricks … that even the experienced student cannot wholly anticipate.” Some historians avoid coming to grips with the issue by leaving causation implicit in a sequence of developments: Ambitions precede actions, decadence precedes decline, and the like. Others search out probable causes in the complex interdependence of events. Still others, dismissing the traditional solutions as flummery, arm themselves with theories and methods from the social sciences and go after the true causes.

Into this disorder comes Peter Gay, a...