Amazon.com (ISBN 0006376649, Paperback)

Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, is a British historian of the highest credentials. He attempts here in 1,000 short pages to encapsulate the tumultuous events of the second half of the 20th century. In straightforward language, he presents a chronological narrative of what happened around the world. Each year is given its own chapter. His direct style recaptures the immediacy of the epoch-making events he describes, and the book sometimes reads like a breaking news report. The author maintains a laudable objectivity: The material is not Eurocentric but attempts to provide a genuine world overview. Besides politics, he includes stories with social significance, such as environmental disasters, the plight of refugees, even the sociological impact of birth-control pills. Thirty-six maps clarify accounts of military campaigns and international and ethnic rivalries, and 52 photographs present iconic images of the period. What Gilbert cannot do within this narrative format is analyze or comment at length on the episodes he is describing. Themes such as the growing awareness of human rights or the increasingly interrelated nature of complex global phenomena emerge almost by accident; they are not defined and developed, and the book becomes a prodigious procession of unfolding events. The value of A History of the Twentieth Century is as an encyclopedia, as an easily accessible store of raw material: in this sense it is a useful addition to the amateur historian's library. --John Stevenson