20th Century Books - Page 6

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Tony Judt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Nothing short of brilliant 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

In this long and detailed resection of Europe post World War II, Judt has finally put all the little pieces that led to "modern Europe" into place and, more importantly, into perspective. Not since Barbara Tuchman carefully negotiated events has anyone made such a profound effort to help us understand where we are now by retracing the path to the present.

Editorial Review:

Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review

Almost a decade in the making , this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world’s most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change—all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.

* A Time and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
* Maps, photos, and cartoons throughout

We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah

Patrick K. O'Donnell

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Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The platoon included four pairs of best friends. Each of the four would lose a best friend forever.Five months after being deployed to Iraq, Lima Company’s 1st Platoon found itself in Fallujah, embroiled in some of the most intense house-to-house, hand-to-hand combat since World War II. Civilians were used as human shields or as bait to lure soldiers into buildings rigged with explosives; suicide bombers approached from every corner hoping to die and take Americans with them; radical insurgents, high on adrenaline, fought to the death. The Marines of the 1st Platoon (part of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment) were among the first to fight in Fallujah, and they bore the brunt of this epic battle. When it was over, the platoon had suffered thirty-five casualties, including four dead.This is their story.Award-winning author and historian Patrick O’Donnell stood shoulder-to-shoulder with this modern band of brothers as they marched and fought through the streets of Fallujah, and he stayed with them as the casualties mounted. O’Donnell captures not only the sights, sounds, and smells of the gritty street combat, but also the human drama of young men in a close-knit platoon fighting for their lives-and the lives of their buddies. We Were One chronicles the 1st Platoon’s story, from its formation at Camp Pendleton in California to its near destruction in the smoldering ruins of Fallujah.We Were One is an unforgettable portrait of the new “Greatest Generation.”With 16 pages of extraordinary photographs from the front lines of the Battle for Fallujah.

The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities

Lawrence C. Ross Jr.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A good introduction but... 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

As a member of one of the D9 sororities (Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.) I found this book to be a great intro for those that don't know much about the 9 organizations which make up the NPHC. Each organization's history and achievements are briefly reviewed along with some interviews of famous members and undergrad and grad chapters. I don't however find the answers to many questions that many people (D9 and non-D9) want to know. For a more in depth look into the history, legacy, and future of the D9, as well as the WHY's of Black Greek Letter Organizations, there is a phenomenal book out there titled "African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and The Vision." This book was written by D9 professors and scholars and is well worth the read. It will answer or attempt to answer many of the questions that most want to know, such as WHY D9 organizations do what they do? and HOW did it all get started? The book African American Fraternities And Sororities: The Legacy And The Vision is a great value to D9 members and non-D9 members alike, and especially for the other ethnic orgs (other BGLOs, Latin, Asian, Multicultural) that have copied the D9 in how they currently do things but do not know WHY we/they do them. It's a part of our history and heritage and you will find many of the answers to your questions in the book. If you want a great overall look into the D9, I recommend buying both books.

Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century

Jeffry A. Frieden

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Globalization 2.0 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 31 people found this review helpful.

Jeffrey Frieden, a Harvard professor specializing in international trade and finance, has written a masterly and comprehensive history of capitalism from 1870 to the present. His history of globalization reminds us that it is not a recent develpment and that its current success is not guaranteed.

The first era of globalization (1870 to 1914) had many of the same characteristics as today's. There was an unprecedented cross-border movement of goods, capital, and labor. (Labor more so in the first era.) During these years huge amounts of capital moved overseas to America, Canada, and Argentina mainly due to the reduced costs of communication and transportation. The technologies driving this globalization were the telegraph and railroads. It was also facilitated by the fact that most currencies were convertible to gold. The investment in the Americas was also followed by a huge immigrant population. In these years, America, Canada, and Argentina had much larger immmigrant populations at the turn of the 20th century than today.

The main thing that distinguishes the present globalization from the first is what happened in between. After the Great Depression and World War II remedies were put into place to mitigate the damaging effects of these economic and social catastrophes. Social benefits such as unions, minimum wage, healthcare and pensions were established as safety nets. In the era between the two globalizations when economies were mostly national the safety nets were part of the social contract between capital and labor.

In 1980, when our current era of globalization begins, capital began to move overseas again in order to find countries with lower labor and social costs. This time, however, labor did not follow. The industrialized countries now have large middle classes with social benefits promised who are not certain about how they are going to be paid. This is causing many in the industrialized world to have second thoughts about our current phase of globalization.

Frieden has a guarded optimism about global capitalism and thinks it is still the best system for distributing wealth. Yet, his last chapter "Global Capitalism Troubled" points to some more clouds on the horizon. There seems to be a growing gap between those who control capital and those who work for a living. People understand that globalization is inevitable but they want a new set of rules to address the growing inequalities.

Frieden is a cheerleader for a more equitable capitalism that can deliver both social benefits and robust economic growth.

Editorial Review:

"Magisterial history...one of the most comprehensive histories of modern capitalism yet written."—New York Times Book Review

In 1900 international trade reached unprecedented levels and the world's economies were more open to one another than ever before. Then as now, many people considered globalization to be inevitable and irreversible. Yet the entire edifice collapsed in a few months in 1914.

Globalization is a choice, not a fact. It is a result of policy decisions and the politics that shape them. Jeffry A. Frieden's insightful history explores the golden age of globalization during the early years of the century, its swift collapse in the crises of 1914-45, the divisions of the Cold War world, and the turn again toward global integration at the end of the century. His history is full of character and event, as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (Perennial Classics)

Paul M. Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 97 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Should be required college reading, History can be fun! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Since first reading the first edition a few times as a youth I simply cannot say to much about this book. Johnson brings history to life, he keeps you turning pages and interested in what is going to happen next. Yes, his commentary is a bit too the right, but HE PUTS IT AFTER THE TOPIC AT HAND AND DOES NOT POISON HIS HISTORY WITH IT. Nothing is worse than history where instead of making late comments of his own opinion's an author distorts what really happened to support his own views.This book can make you laugh out loud,curse or simply put it down for a few to catch your breath. I recently purchased the updated version shown here and although a bit dryer the new chapters are on the mark and just as insightful as the rest.Read other reviews for the exact contents of this work,just the wonderful reviews and the debate within them shows why everyone should read this. READ THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE WORLD HISTORY! Especially if you think you will not like world history or are easily bored by standard historical accounts.

Editorial Review:

The classic world history of the events, ideas, and personalities of the twentieth century.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

Anonymous

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

In Your Face 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Despite all of my attentions paid to the history of man's cruelty to man,
(and women), over the course of the past few decades, I have never exper-
ienced a more poignant accounting of same than that which "A Woman in Berlin" had to offer. The author's physical survival and psychological victory over the most tragic circumstances imaginable is a testament to the power of applied intellect in the face of mindless savagery. Truly, this literary work is a wonderful testament to the strength of the female spirit and the durability of a pure human sole.

Editorial Review:

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
 
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

A Woman in Berlin stands as "one of the essential books for understanding war and life" (A. S. Byatt, author of Possession).

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert F. Kennedy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

AS WE APPROACH IN HALF A YEAR THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS FBI ASSASSINATION LET US RECALL WHEN WISDOM AND DIPLOMACY RULED 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Here we have in Robert Kennedy's own account how the world kept out of annihilating nuclear warfare nearly a half century ago, rather than the current highly profitable rushes to war with untold, uncounted millions of innocent victims these past few decades.

Here we can read how true, wise, competent and democratically elected national leaders kept us out of war, Averting 'The Final Failure': John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford Nuclear Age Series).

The only lamentable sectio of this chronicle may be, as ever, Schlesinger's introduction. The rest let us read and pray once more for leaders of peace and morality, not of corrupt as profitable war-mongering.

There are several accounts of those thirteen days, and films. Let us best begin with this book.

Editorial Review:

The unique, gripping account of the perilous showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In a clear and simple record, he describes the personalities involved in the crisis, with particular attention to the actions and attitudes of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He describes the daily, even hourly, exchanges between Russian representatives and American. In firsthand immediacy we see the frightening responsibility of two great nations holding the fate of the world in their hands.

Wonderland: A Fairytale of the Soviet Monolith

Jason Eskenazi

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Editorial Review:

The story of Communism is the story of the twentieth century. For many, the Soviet Union existed, like their childhood, as a fairy tale where many of the realities of life were hidden from plain view. When the Berlin Wall finally fell, so too did the illusion of that utopia. Wonderland is a photographic exploration that portrays both the reality beneath the veneer of a utopian USSR and the affirmation of hope that should never be abandoned. And like all fairy tales try to teach us: the hard lessons of self-reliance.

Jason Eskenazi was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Taylor Prize.

White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard

Daniel Johnson

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Daniel Johnson -- journalist, editor, scholar, and chess enthusiast who
once played Garry Kasparov to a draw in a simultaneous exhibition --
is the perfect guide to one of history's most remarkable periods,
when chess matches were front-page news and captured the world's imagination.

The Cold War played out in many areas: geopolitical alliances, military
coalitions, cat-and-mouse espionage, the arms race, proxy wars -- and
chess. An essential pastime of Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries,
and later adopted by the Communists as a symbol of Soviet power, chess
was inextricably linked to the rise and fall of the "evil empire." This original
narrative history recounts in gripping detail the singular part the
Immortal Game played in the Cold War. From chess's role in the Russian
Revolution -- Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were all avid players -- to the 1945
radio match when the Soviets crushed the Americans, prompting Stalin's
telegram "Well done lads!"; to the epic contest between Bobby Fischer
and Boris Spassky in 1972 at the height of détente, when Kissinger told
Fischer to "go over there and beat the Russians"; to the collapse of the
Soviet Union itself, White King and Red Queen takes us on a fascinating
tour of the Cold War's checkered landscape.

The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World

Kati Marton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this ground-breaking book, acclaimed author Kati Marton brings to life an unknown chapter of World War II: the tale of nine men who grew up in Budapest's brief Golden Age, then, driven from Hungary by anti-Semitism, fled to the West, especially to the United States, and changed the world. These nine men, each celebrated for individual achievements, were actually part of a unique group who grew up in a time and place that will never come again. It is Marton's extraordinary achievement to trace what for a few dazzling years was common to all of them -- the magic air of Budapest -- and show how their separate lives and careers were, in fact, all shaped by Budapest's lively café life before the darkness closed in.

Marton follows the astonishing lives of four history-changing scientists, all just one step ahead of Hitler's terror state, who helped usher in the nuclear age and the computer (Edward Teller, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner); two major movie myth-makers (Michael Curtiz, who directed Casablanca, and Alexander Korda, who produced The Third Man); two immortal photographers (Robert Capa and Andre Kertesz); and one seminal writer (Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon).

Marton follows these brilliant products of Budapest's Golden Age as they flee fascism in the 1920s and 1930s en route to sanctuary -- and immortality. As the scientists labor in the secret city of Los Alamos in the race to build the atom bomb, Koestler, once a communist agent imprisoned by Franco, writes the most important anticommunist novel of the century. Capa, the first photographer to go ashore on D-Day, later romances Ingrid Bergman and is acknowledged as the world's greatest war photographer before his tragic death in Vietnam. Curtiz not only gives us Casablanca, consistently voted the greatest romantic movie ever made, but also discovers Doris Day and directs James Cagney in the quintessential patriotic film, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Ultimately, The Great Escape is an American story and an important, previously untold chapter of the tumultuous last century. Yet it is also a poignant story -- in the words of the great historian Fritz Stern, "an evocation of genius in exile . . . an instructive, moving delight." An epilogue relates the journey into exile of three members of the next generation of Budapest exiles: financier-philanthropist George Soros, Intel founder Andy Grove, and 2002 Nobel laureate in literature Imre Kertesz.