Annotation: In her new book Aleida Assmann, the well-renown German historian and specialist in historical memory and memorial culture, raises the question of disintegration of the past, the present and the future and highlights the need to build up a new type of interconnection between them. The author demonstrates, how did the past become the key characteristic phenomenon of the Western society and why did the future lose its credit nowadays. The materials of different epochs and spheres of culture collected by the author allow for reconstruction of the time as a complex cultural phenomenon that needs thorough and multi-faceted analyzing, trace the symptoms of the looming crisis of modernity and forecast the necessary changes in our attitude towards the future.