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The Dark Valley by Piers Brendon
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The Dark Valley (2000)

by Piers Brendon

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6001039,077 (4.11)12
A magisterial, unprecedented overview of the clouded and turbulent years before World War II. It was a decade dominated worldwide by the Great Depression, by unemployment and hardship; a time when human achievement was matched by pervasive fear; when the great neon metaphors of hope that rose up after World War I--Broadway, Piccadilly Circus, the Kurfürstendamm, the Ginza--grew dim both literally and figuratively. It was a decade during which darkness often masqueraded as light--Hitler's abolition of unemployment in Germany; Stalin's plans for progress and social equality in Russia; Mussolini's "revival" of Italy--while governments established and maintained control through brutal physical repression and the more insidious, lasting repressions of truth: sanctioned deception and relentless propaganda. It was a decade during which a diffuse economic and social crisis condensed into a massive political and military storm. Focusing individually on each of the primary staging grounds for history during the 1930s--the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Japan, Russia and Spain--Piers Brendon traces the particular and diverse experiences of the decade. Political and economic circumstances form the framework of this breathtaking work of scholarship, but it is also the story of people: both of crucial figures--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Roosevelt, Franco, Chiang Kai-Shek and Mussolini, to name a few--and of a secondary, but no less fascinating, cast of characters, including George Orwell, Leni Riefenstahl and Ernest Hemingway. Brendon vividly conjures the texture and tone of life in places as far-flung as Paris and Kyoto, Vienna and Shanghai, Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains and Norris in the Tennessee Valley. He depicts the circumstances of the Ukrainian famine and the American Dust Bowl, the Night of the Long Knives and the conquest of Ethiopia, the bombing of Guernica, the Anschluss and the great Soviet purges. He describes the clothes people wore, the food they ate, the books and newspapers they read, the work they did or lacked, the beliefs they held, the pleasures they enjoyed, the sufferings they endured. The public sphere and the personal realm, the collective lives of nations and the details of individual lives--each element of the book contributes to its brilliant elucidation of the ways in which, during the 1930s, political power obscured knowledge, economic catastrophe darkened understanding and the foundation was laid for the most profound and far-reaching crisis of modern times. The Dark Valley is a revelation of the ten years that set the course for the remainder of the twentieth century.--Publisher description.… (more)
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The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s by Piers Brendon (2000)

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» See also 12 mentions

English (9)  Swedish (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (11)
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
Piers Brendon's "panorama" of the years leading up to WWII is intelligent, comprehensive, thoughtful, and frightening. Brendon does not shy from the brutal facts of brutish power, or the newfound abilities of that power to manipulate people through new mass media and technologies. Democracies and dictatorships alike lied with effect, including the most destructive of self-deceits. Well-written snd accessible, The Dark Valley should be in the library of every leader and citizen. ( )
  dasam | Jun 20, 2018 |
This book is well-written, but the author repeats the garbage that Stalin had to do what was necessary to pull Russia into the modern era. Otherwise presents interesting information on Mussolini's Italy and interwar France. I think the book is well-written in an engaging style. For those who like the old show "Connections" hosted by James Burke, the way this author segues from one topic to another to show how all of these facets contributed to this ugly period in human history is a delight. I've read other reviews where readers were put off and failed to see the connections he was building. ( )
  Hae-Yu | May 19, 2015 |
Brendon tried to the impossible with this book- there's just no way anyone can squeeze a decade as crazy as the thirties into one book. Given that though, he did a great job of laying out the facts. But don't come to this book expecting explanation. The vast majority of it reads like the work of an immensely talented autodidact historian who has completely lost his ability to follow a thought through an entire paragraph. This is seemingly by design- "this tome," Brendon says, "is a parcel of epitomies," he claims to "accumulate personal minutiae" and conjures up "the contemporary experience... via detail of the clothes people wore, the food they ate, the cigarettes they smoked." All of which is great if you want a 'feeling for the period', but pretty dismal and dull if you want to know *why* something happened. He's obviously capable of explaining the whys of history, as the final chapter on the Nazi-Soviet pact makes clear. I just wish he'd done more of that, and spent less time on the details of Blum's cigarettes, Churchill's dinners, or the endless (and hilarious) follies of prominent Nazis.
As a side note, this somewhat ADD-style of piling up anecdotes also makes the writing less wonderful than it could have been. Brendon's obviously a talented stylist, but it's difficult to appreciate that when every sentence introduces a new epitome, rather than building on previous sentences, every paragraph introduces a new anecdote rather than explaining more fully the previous paragraph, and so on.
( )
1 vote stillatim | Dec 29, 2013 |
A comprehensive narrative of the insanity that beset much of the human race in the 1930's, focusing on the seven countries who would become the major belligerents in WWII. While there are passages that could have been dropped, the author does a creditable job describing the fear-driven universe created by the Great Depression and Nationalism. ( )
  robertmorrow | Jul 15, 2011 |
Exactly what I want in a history book. A light shone on a time that I was not as familiar w as I should have been. Well written it fleshed out some of the people, incidents, and failures that led to WWII. We think of this war as inevitable but there were so many other possible outcomes. It explained some of the complexities of the Depression era as well. ( )
  JBreedlove | Jul 21, 2010 |
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
Those who worry about the fragility of today's world order should remember the nightmarish 1930s. In a masterful survey of that troubled decade, Brendon traces the political pathways of the great powers in the throes of economic collapse and social upheaval. This massive book also offers fascinating sketches of democrats and dictators struggling to cope with (or exploit) the enveloping economic misery. But the central drama is the rise of fascism, rooted in national humiliation and nourished by the everyday anger of common citizens. Mussolini's March on Rome in 1921, for example, revealed both fascism's absurdity and its potent possibilities in a world economic crisis. American and British leaders are depicted as practical and determined but lacking a coherent script. Brendon reminds the reader of an old insight: Illiberal politics lurk in the shadow of major economic recession.
 
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A magisterial, unprecedented overview of the clouded and turbulent years before World War II. It was a decade dominated worldwide by the Great Depression, by unemployment and hardship; a time when human achievement was matched by pervasive fear; when the great neon metaphors of hope that rose up after World War I--Broadway, Piccadilly Circus, the Kurfürstendamm, the Ginza--grew dim both literally and figuratively. It was a decade during which darkness often masqueraded as light--Hitler's abolition of unemployment in Germany; Stalin's plans for progress and social equality in Russia; Mussolini's "revival" of Italy--while governments established and maintained control through brutal physical repression and the more insidious, lasting repressions of truth: sanctioned deception and relentless propaganda. It was a decade during which a diffuse economic and social crisis condensed into a massive political and military storm. Focusing individually on each of the primary staging grounds for history during the 1930s--the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Japan, Russia and Spain--Piers Brendon traces the particular and diverse experiences of the decade. Political and economic circumstances form the framework of this breathtaking work of scholarship, but it is also the story of people: both of crucial figures--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Roosevelt, Franco, Chiang Kai-Shek and Mussolini, to name a few--and of a secondary, but no less fascinating, cast of characters, including George Orwell, Leni Riefenstahl and Ernest Hemingway. Brendon vividly conjures the texture and tone of life in places as far-flung as Paris and Kyoto, Vienna and Shanghai, Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains and Norris in the Tennessee Valley. He depicts the circumstances of the Ukrainian famine and the American Dust Bowl, the Night of the Long Knives and the conquest of Ethiopia, the bombing of Guernica, the Anschluss and the great Soviet purges. He describes the clothes people wore, the food they ate, the books and newspapers they read, the work they did or lacked, the beliefs they held, the pleasures they enjoyed, the sufferings they endured. The public sphere and the personal realm, the collective lives of nations and the details of individual lives--each element of the book contributes to its brilliant elucidation of the ways in which, during the 1930s, political power obscured knowledge, economic catastrophe darkened understanding and the foundation was laid for the most profound and far-reaching crisis of modern times. The Dark Valley is a revelation of the ten years that set the course for the remainder of the twentieth century.--Publisher description.

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