It was not 1066 or 1588 or 1945, yet 1926 was the year A.A. Milne published Winnie-the-Pooh and Alfred Hitchcock released his first successful film, The Lodger. A set of modern masters was at work - Jorge Luis Borges, Babe Ruth, Leni Riefenstahl, Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Greta Garbo, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein and Martin Heidegger - while factory workers, secretaries, engineers, architects, and Argentine cattle-ranchers were performing...