The 20th Century: A World History

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 ...