ABSTRACT

 From this major author comes a totally unique history of the twentieth century. Eschewing the traditional model for histories of this kind – blow-by-blow political narratives typically overloaded with detail - Jeremy Black offers us instead a brilliant thematic account of the last 100 years with the environment and the continuing strength of religious belief at its centre.  

Looking back to the 1910s and 1920s, Black begins with "the greatest issue of all" – the natural environment and its destruction, and moves to show how our world been transformed by urbanisation and development. Amazing developments took place across the century: men walked on the moon, the internet revolutionised communications; advances in health and medicine; developments in manufacturing and technology; economic globalization – all have changed the way different parts of the world related to each other.  How have these revolutionary changes impacted on religion and politics?

In the final sections of the book, Black looks at the persistence and growing extremism in religious belief, how change creates instability and wars, and how power blocs emerged and collapsed in response to all these developments.  This is twentieth century world history on a truly global scale. The Twentieth Century World forces us to rethink the way we view the past, and offers us a new way to understand the present.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

Whose World History

chapter one|17 pages

Dominion over Every Living Thing

Challenging the Earth

chapter two|24 pages

The Crowded World

Resources and Pressures

chapter three|12 pages

Concrete and Steel

The Human Environment

chapter four|28 pages

The Shifting Kaleidoscope

Social Change

chapter five|27 pages

Economic Worlds

chapter six|19 pages

Prometheus Unbound

Machines and Goods

chapter seven|34 pages

Human or Divine?

Ideas and Beliefs

chapter eight|28 pages

World in Flames

Politics and War 1900-1950

chapter |23 pages

Fall of Empires

Politics and War 1950-2000

chapter |4 pages

Conclusions