AD

[Ghetta Life]

This really is a find.

Against the Day:
"Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years 
just after World War I"

There is a discrepancy between the starting dates for the contraction of the 
"disease."  Also, Stencil's focus would be primarily in Europe, but the AD 
synopsis implies an American focus

>From the PBS "Great war" timeline for pre-1914 events:  1894 - "Nicolas is 
crowned Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, a position he did not want. Germany and 
Russia do not renew a friendship treaty and begin their adversary 
relationship."

1859 Wikpedia snippets:

March 9 - The army of Piedmont-Sardinia mobilizes against Austria, beginning 
the crisis which will lead to the Austro-Sardinian War.

April 23 - The Austrians send an ultimatum to Piedmont, demanding 
demobilization. This puts Austria in the position of an aggressor, and leads 
to French intervention. Piedmont rejects the ultimatum, and war breaks out.

April 25 - Ground is broken for the Suez Canal

July 11 - Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, faced with an expensive war against 
France and the kingdom of Sardinia and potential revolution in Hungary, 
meets Napoleon III, who also worries at the costs of extending the war and 
fears the effects of Italian nationalism, at Villafranca. By the preliminary 
treaty signed there, hostilities cease. Lombardy is ceded to the French (who 
immediately cede it to Sardinia), while the Austrians keep Venetia and the 
French promise to restore the Central Italian rulers expelled in the course 
of the war. This brings the Austro-Sardinian War effectively to a close.

December 2 - Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his 
October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry.

>From: "Dustin Iler" <osirx277 at hotmail.com>
>
>Sidney Stencil on the period in which AD is said to be set . . .
>
>" 'Which way does it go? As a youth I believed in social progress because I 
>saw chances for personal progress of my own. Today, at age sixty, having 
>gone as far as I'm about to, I see nothing but a dead end for myself, and 
>if you're right, for my society as well. But then: suppose Sidney Stencil 
>has remained constant after all--suppose instead sometime between 1859 and 
>1919, the world contracted a disease which no one ever took the trouble to 
>diagnose because the symptoms were too subtle-- blending in with the events 
>of history, no different one by one but altogether--fatal. This is how the 
>public, you know, see the late war. As a new and rare disease which has now 
>been curred (sic) and conquered for ever.' "
>
>V. (Perrenial Classics) pg. 498
>
>
>Against the Day, being set in this period and leading up to that 
>cataclysmic event, promises to be the diagnosis.
>

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