The benefit of being a cosmopolitan is that he begins to think the old kind of home probably restricts his development and activities．

8．The universalizing imperative of technology is irresistable.

The compelling force of technology to universalize cannot be resisted．

9．...when every artist thought he owed it to himself to turn his back on the Eiffel Tower, as a protest against the architectural blasphemy,

When every artist thought it was his duty to show his contempt for and objection to the Eiffel Tower which they considered an irreverent architectural structure.

10．...a mobile, extra human plasticity which was absolutely new.

a flexible and pliable quality that was beyond human powers and absolutely new.

11．It has thus undermined an article of faith: the thingliness of things.

People used to firmly believe that the things they saw around them were real solid substances but this has now been thrown into doubt by science,

12. That, perhaps,establishes the logical limit of the modern aesthetic.

This is perhaps the furthest limit of how solid objective things may be disappearing．

lesson 10

1.The slightest mention of the decade brings nostalgic recollections to the middle-aged…

At the very mention of this post-war period, middle-aged people begin to think about it longingly.

2. The rejection of Victorian gentility was,in any case, inevitable.

In any case, an American could not avoid casting aside its middle-class respectability and affected refinement.

3.The war acted merely as a catalytic agent in this breakdown of the Victorian social structure….

The war only helped to speed up the breakdown of the Victorian social structure.

4. …it was tempted,in America at least,to escape its responsibilities and retreat behind an air of naughty alcoholic sophistication..

In America at least, the young people were strongly inclined to shirk their responsibilities. They pretended to be worldly-wise, drinking and behaving naughtily.

5.Prohibition afforded the young the additional opportunity of making their pleasures illicit,...

The young people found greater pleasure in their drinking because Prohibition, by making drinking unlawful added a sense of adventure.