A History of the Twentieth Century: 1952-1999: 3 - Hardcover

Gilbert, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068810066X ISBN 13: 9780688100667

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1999

Synopsis

One of the most respected and prolific historians of his era, Gilbert concludes his massive three-volume history of the century in fine form. Gilbert returns to his story in the middle of the Korean War and takes readers through April 1999, as NATO bombs devastate Serbia. He names the chapters for years and seldom strays from strict chronology. This method allows him to avoid the false clarities of 20/20 hindsight, but it also sacrifices some cohesion, as events that might be illuminatingly linked by theme are separated, sometimes artificially, by the advent of a new year. Not surprisingly, the main drama in this volume is the Cold War and its aftershocks. Gilbert demonstrates how the military rivalry between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. obsessed the two superpowers (he points out that both the U.S. highway system and the military precursor to the Internet were designed as contingencies in case of nuclear attack) and dictated alignments throughout the world. Gilbert also focuses on events outside the geopolitical arena: the text begins with a description of the first artificial heart surgery, and he keeps his thumb on the accelerating pulse of technology and popular culture. Gilbert's catalogue of years is an essential blueprint of recent world history and should prove a fitting capstone to the century as well as his illustrious career.

About this title

Review:

‘In his great work, the writing is lucid, the pace perfectly judged, the evidence vividly conjured. The horrors are heightened by a style of almost Confucian reticence, which teaches without didacticism. In Gilbert's vision of history, the vast range never blurs the human scale. He is inspired by a victim of the Japanese brutalisation of Canton in 1937: "Historians may appropriate only a line or two to record this present catastrophe, but it is tremendous to those of us that are in it."' FELIPE FERNĄNDEZ-ARMESTO, Sunday Times

From the Back Cover:

Martin Gilbert is Britain’s leading popular historian. His History of the Twentieth Century is a complete global narrative history of our century. The undisputed master of narrative history, he has an extraordinary ability to muster detailed facts into rich and compelling prose. He retells the events of this, the most horrifying and surprising century that the world has ever experienced, and makes sense of them in a global (and personal) context. As the countries of the world fought and recovered from two World Wars. This single-volume history takes us up to the present day, weaving a rich historical narrative of the multifarious and contradictory events of the last century , which ranges across the bloody events of many wars (from Korea to Bosnia), the post-war resurrection of Europe and the United Nations, the Arms Race, the shooting of JFK, the advent of computerisation, Man’s arrival on the moon, Aids and heart transplants, Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is history which makes sense of the most destructive yet most creative century humanity has ever experienced.

'A mammoth undertaking, a miracle of dense compression, demonstrating a sense of proportion sustained with extraordinary self-discipline and a capacity to absorb, digest and shape a mountain of miscellaneous material... A salient and invaluable reference book, austerely non-judgmental, lucid and measured.' PHILIP ZIEGLER, Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 068810066X
• ISBN 13: 9780688100667
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1072