A brilliant work of history. Paul Johnson - even if you do not agree with his worldview - is a great writer, and has a pretty solid command of European certainly, and also world history. He is a right-of-centre humanist. His book rails against relative moral values and against the monstrous destruction of human life wrought throughout the 20th century by big governments bent on reforming mankind. Although largely a pessimistic book, it does leave sufficient room for optimism that we - mankind - can survive and indeed do better.
The emphasis throughout on right and wrong is a useful antidote to life in the 21st century, I must say. ( )

Not Read

I have not read this 870 page book. However, I have skimmed two parts which I find questionable: Johnson writes about the large Allied bombing of Dresden and that 135,000 were killed. For this number he cites David Irving. Irving's number has been seriously critized and had Johnson had any thorough command of World War II history and historians he would not have faulted there. The second issue is in the beginning chapter 'A relativistic world' where the physical notion of relativity is mentioned along moral anarchy. Relativity just happens to share the name with (moral) relativism. Had Einstein chosen the name 'space-time theory' would Johnson still have mentioned it? I doubt. The mixup of physics hard theories with 'intellectual' social sciences has been ridiculed by Alan Sokal, and I find that Paul Johnson in his opening chapter makes just such a mistake.

Modern history

Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties Revised Edition, by Paul Johnson (read 8 Mar 1992) This is a most excellent book, written by a man who was an English journalist and since the 1980's has been mostly a writer. The first edition of this book was published in 1983 and this Revised Edition is a mere reprint of the earlier book with a new chapter, chapter 20, added covering the period 1983 to 1991. But what a change in outlook in the last chapter! Everything was gloom-filled till the last chapter--now the good is triumphant! And the book ends in earlier 1991 and so does not include the August coup in Russia nor the end of the USSR! The author is very opinionated and some of his views really startle but in general I in my conservative old age really liked what he had to say. But one of his startling views: Harding and Coolidge were great presidents! The book is really a tour de force though it covers in a sentence many things I have read whole books on. The book is indeed a major full-scale analysis of how the modern age came into being and where it is headed. I like the book so much I'd like to read the author's The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830. ( )