Thomas Ort is Associate Professor of History at Queens College-City University of New York, USA.

“Ort sets out to explore Čapek’s life, work, and intellectual background as well as the cultural life in Prague of the early twentieth century. … There is no doubt the book is well-researched and sheds light on many aspects of cultural life in modern Prague. … his analysis manages to capture how rich and intertwined the worlds of literature, philosophy, architecture, and the visual arts were in Prague in the first few decades of the twentieth century.” (Marta Filipova, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 48, 2017)"Ort's text should be of interest to students not only of Slavic literature and history but of European modernism in general. Summing Up: Highly recommended." - CHOICE   "Thomas Ort is a pleasure to read... his writing is lucid and unpretentious." - Times Literary Supplement

• 1. Prague 1911: The Cubist City2. Between Life and Form: Karel ?apek and the Prewar Modernist Generation3. The Lessons of Life: Karel ?apek and the First World War4. Art ? Life: The '?apek Generation' and Dev?tsil in Interwar Czechoslovakia5. The Self as Empty Space and Crowd: Karel ?apek and the Czechoslovak Condition