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Cargando... A Short History of the Twentieth Centurypor John Lukacs
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"The historian John Lukacs offers a concise history of the twentieth century--its two world wars and cold war, its nations and leaders. The great themes woven through this spirited narrative are inseparable from the author's own intellectual preoccupations: the fading of liberalism, the rise of populism and nationalism, the achievements and dangers of technology, and the continuing democratization of the globe. The historical twentieth century began with the First World War in 1914 and ended seventy-five years later with the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989. The short century saw the end of European dominance and the rise of American power and influence throughout the world. The twentieth century was an American century--perhaps the American century. Lukacs explores in detail the phenomenon of national socialism (national socialist parties, he reminds us, have outlived the century), Hitler's sole responsibility for the Second World War, and the crucial roles played by his determined opponents Churchill and Roosevelt. Between 1939 and 1942 Germany came closer to winning than many people suppose. Lukacs casts a hard eye at the consequences of the Second World War--the often misunderstood Soviet-American cold war--and at the shifting social and political developments in the Far and Middle East and elsewhere. In an eloquent closing meditation on the passing of the twentieth century, he reflects on the advance of democracy throughout the world and the limitations of human knowledge." -- Publisher website. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)909.82History and Geography History World history 1800- 1900-1999, 20th centuryClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.75)
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The history offered here is, indeed, short at 228 pages. It’s also incomplete – Lukacs’ twentieth century runs from 1914 to 1989, and thus clocks in at a tidy 75 years – and riddled with factual errors ranging from the trivial (Warren Harding’s campaign slogan) to the jaw-dropping (getting the location of Pakistan wrong by 1000 miles; erasing three major wars from the history of 19C South America). It is also aggressively Eurocentric: spending chapters on that continent’s internal politics (particularly between 1920 and 1945) while glossing over the internal affairs of Asia, Latin America, and Africa in the broadest and vaguest of terms. The handling of post-colonial Africa is broad, dismissive, and dark enough that it dances up to the very edge of being racist caricature.
Readers already familiar with the history of the last century may well enjoy Lukacs’ take on it. He is fiercely opinionated and, as a self-proclaimed “reactionary,” perpetually and intensely cranky about this most modern (and modernizing) of centuries . . . all of which makes him fun to argue with. This should not, however, be anybody’s first (or second) book on the subject: Too much is left out, too much is gotten wrong, and too much is distorted.
(The views expressed here are developed at greater length, backed up by examples, at: http://www.popmatters.com/review/175997-a-brief-history-of-the-twentieth-century... ) (