For much of the world, the twentieth century can be seen as a big-budget disaster film--the stifling darkness of oppression, the green of the ruling classes. For the world's elite, the near-universal adoption of capitalism today reveals modern history as a narrative of unbroken progress. Eschewing conventional chronological accounts, The Twentieth Century is organized around the major themes of the last hundred years. To help us understand our recent past and probable future, Clive Ponting offers a "world systems" theory. His analysis holds that a few core states have dominated much of the rest of the world, which provides raw materials and cheap labor and remains tied to the core as virtual colonial territory. Between these extremes are Latin America, the Middle East, and eastern Asia, which have a limited shot at self-determination. Economic, social, and political differences between the core and periphery continue to grow. Atlantic predominance, which molded world history for four hundred years, has been challenged by the countries of the Pacific. The book's central theme revolves around the struggle between progress and barbarism; the hope for our future is that "our conscience will catch up with our reason." Everywhere in the world people now live longer than their predecessors. A majority has become literate, and most have benefited from recent technological progress. Nevertheless, democracy is unavailable to the preponderance of people, and in the century's final years the chasm between rich and poor continues to expand. On the eve of the millennium this vivid history is a must-read.
How has the world changed in the last century? This text looks back across 100 years of turbulence, Clive Ponting providing a reassessment of what the 20th century has meant...
The German army, loyal to the parliamentary regime under the Chancellor, Friedrich Ebert, attacked the revolutionaries with artillery and machine-gun fire. Those who tried to escape were hunted down, and 1,200 were executed.
Provides a perspective on world history absent of an ideological slant in this century. The text explores developments in science and technology, economics, political and social developments, international relations, and...
done in a number of places in this country under the immediate supervision of General L. R. Groves and the general direction ... Nevertheless , I wish you would express to the scientists assembled with you my deep appreciation of their ...
“An intellectual feast, learned, lucid, challenging and accessible.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Ideas crackle” in this triumphant final book of Tony Judt, taking readers on “a wild ride through the ideological currents and shoals ...
(Coffee Table Books, Design Books, Best Books About Color) Leatrice Eiseman, Keith Recker. Anne Aubrey in a Lux brand soap ad 1959 right Audrey Hepburn in a publicity photo for Funny Face 1957 opposite page Grace Kelly posing for Life ...
The author describes the culture of mass death in the 20th century, from the battlefields of both World Wars to local disasters and organized famines, during which some 110 million...
“New Deal Expenditures in Alabama: Was Economic Need Addressed?” Alabama Review 50 (July 1997): 181–84. Curtis, Verna P., and Stanley Mallach. Photography and Reform: Lewis Hine and the National Child Labor Committee.
The great themes woven through John Lukacs's spirited, concise history of the twentieth century are inseparable from the author's own intellectual preoccupations: the fading of liberalism, the rise of populism and nationalism, the ...
Additions to this edition include further analysis of earlier periods based on recent scholarship, colourful new quotations, new suggested sources, more emphasis on social, economic, cultural and women's history and an updated chapter on ...