-
Period: to
A Law of Acceleration by Henry Adams
At the dawn of the twentieth century, a brilliant thinker of the late nineteenth century muses about how historical change is accelerating and considers how poorly his traditional education has prepared him for it. -
Period: to
1900: The Promise of a New Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
A modern American Historian depicts the hopes and fears of people in the Western world as the twentieth century opens. -
Period: to
Votes for Women by George Dangerfield
An English historian recalls the controversies surrounding the suffragist movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the issue of whether woman should be allowed to vote aroused strong feelings on both sides. -
Period: to
Revolution Ravages Mexico by Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds
During the decade of 1910-1920, Mexico experienced the first of the great revolutions and civil wars that would grip many developing nations during the twentieth century. -
Period: to
The Coming of World War I by Martin Gilbert
A modern British historian analyzes the blunders of European statesmen as the Continent stumbles through the crisis that will end in the outbreak of the Great War. -
Period: to
Wilson's Fourteen Points by Woodrow Wilson
U.S. president Woodrow Wilson sets forth his vision of a just peace settlement after World War I enunciates basic principles of American foreign policy for the twentieth century. -
Period: to
In the Trenches of World War I by Erich Maria Remarque
A young German who fought in World War I describes in his best-selling postwar novel what trench warfare was like. -
Period: to
The Bolsheviks Take Power by Robert V. Daniels
Deflating the myth that the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia as part of a well-conceived and flawlessly executed plan, an American expert on Soviet history shows how decisive were chance and the personal qualities of V.I. Lenin. -
Period: to
The Revolution in Physics by Fritjof Capra
A modern nuclear physicist explains how scientific discoveries between 1900 and the 1920s fundamentally altered the way we think about the world. -
Period: to
The Treaty of Versailles by Mark Mazower
A modern British historian argues that, flawed as it was, the post-World War I peace settlement was reasonable and should have been more vigorously enforced. -
Period: to
The Great Depression: Unemployment by John A. Garraty
An American historian compares the human suffering experienced in various industrial countries during the Great Depression. -
Period: to
The Coming of the Pacific War by Kenneth B. Pyle
A modern American historian describes Japan's decision to seek a wider empire in the 1930s, even at the price of war. -
Period: to
The Peasant Revolution in China by Jean Chesneaux
A French historian sympathetically analyzes how the Chinese Communist Party made itself the champion of the peasants' cause during the 1930s and 1940s. -
Period: to
Nonviolence on Trial: Gandhi Responds to World War II by B.R. Nanda
As the globe was plunged into World War II, how did Mohandas Gandhi, the advocate of pacifism and nonviolent civil disobedience, react? -
Period: to
Mussolini Defines Totalitarianism by Bentio Mussolini
Benito Mussolini, Italy's Fascist dictator, proudly boasts that his is a totalitarian regime. -
Period: to
Stalin Starves Ukraine by Robert Conquest
Hating and fearing the Ukrainian peasantry as a potential source of resistance, in the early 1930s Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin chooses to starve them into submission to his will, at a cost of several million lives. -
Period: to
Hitler by Alan Bullock
A British historian analyzes Adolf Hitler's character and ambitions. -
Period: to
Stalin's Great Terror by Robert Conquest
A British expert on Soviet history describes what it meant to live through Stalin's terror campaign in the mid-1930s. -
Period: to
The New Deal: A Middle Way by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
A prominent American liberal and historian of the New Deal explains how, facing the crisis of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt charted a middle course between inaction and dictatorship, thereby preserving both capitalism and liberty in the United States. -
Period: to
The Battle of Britain by Winston S. Churchill
Britain's great wartime leader recalls how narrow was his country's victory in the air war with the Nazi Luftwaffe in 1940. -
Period: to
The Holocaust: A Revolution by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
A modern historian explains how the Holocaust was part of a wider Nazi plan to revolutionize-and barbarize-the world. -
Period: to
Einstein Alerts Roosevelt About Nuclear Weaponry by Richard Rhodes
German scientists discovered that nuclear fission was possible in early 1939, and Albert Einstein was persuaded that the danger of a German atomic weapons program warranted warning President Roosevelt. -
Period: to
A Last Letter from Stalingrad
Facing almost certain death in the decisive battle of World War II, a Nazi German soldier loses his illusions about the cause that has brought him to Stalingrad. -
Period: to
Truman Drops the Bomb by Alonzo Hamby
An American historian explains why President Harry Truman decided to use the atomic bomb against Japan August 1945. -
Settling Scores in a Chinese Village, 1945 by William Hinton
An American who interviewed Chinese villagers describes how, with the Communist Party's encouragement, they paid back their landlords and other exploiters. -
Period: to
Who Started the Cold War? by John Lewis Gaddis
Now that the Cold War is over and more is known about how Soviets as well as Western leaders made policy, we are in a better position to know why the Cold War happened, according to a prominent American authority. -
Period: to
The 1950s: Emergence of the Western Youth Culture by Richard Welch
Besides its entertainment value, rock music was a social and political statement for young people during the 1950s -
Period: to
President Eisenhower Warns of the Military-Industrial Complex by Dwight D. Eisenhower
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a career military officer and hero of World War II, coined the phrase "military-industrial complex" as he was leaving the presidency, and warned Americans to beware of its unchecked power. -
Period: to
Eyeball to Eyeball: The Cuban Missile Crisis by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali
In October 1962, the world stood at the brink of war when President John F. Kennedy demanded that the Soviets cease building a missile base in Cuba. We now know that the world was even closer to nuclear war than anyone in the American government suspected at the time. -
Period: to
Man Lands on the Moon by John Noble Wilford
The front page fo the New York Times reports the first landing of human beings on the moon in July 1969. -
Period: to
Cultural Revolution Convulses China by Jonathan D. Spence
The most violent rebellion of young people during the 1960s occurred in China, with the encouragement of the aging revolutionary Mao Zedong. -
Period: to
Tet and the Vietnam War by Stanley Karnow
America's defeat in the Vietnam War began when the Communists launched their Tet offensive in January 1968. The offensive failed to achieve its immediate objective-to seize control of South Vietnam's cities and spark a popular uprising against the American-backed regime-but succeeded by convincing the American public that the war could not be won by acceptable means. -
Period: to
The Crises of October 1973: Middle East Conflict, Oil, and Watergate by Daniel Yergin
In October 1973, several crisis intersected: An American historian explains the danger of Israel being overrun by its Arab neighbors, the West's vulnerability to a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil, the shaky integrity of the American presidency, and the threat of a Soviet-American nuclear confrontation. -
Period: to
Martin Luther King Jr. Goes to Jail by Taylor Branch
By submitting to arrest and ail during a civil rights demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, writes his biographer, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his cause a new moral dimension that helped carry it to victory. -
Period: to
"Gotta Be This or That": The End of Colonialism by Raymond F. Betts
The era of colonialism ended amid high hopes; an American historian of European imperialism explains why these hopes have been dashed. -
Period: to
Chairman Mao Speaks by Mao Zedong
Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" provided the slogans for China's Cultural Revolution. -
Period: to
Islam Against the West? by Bernard Lewis
Why are many Muslims around the glove convinced that the West, and especially the United States, is the enemy of God? -
Period: to
After Apartheid by The Economist
The fall of apartheid in South Africa has at last opened that country to a democratic and pluralistic future, but that future is not yet assured. -
Period: to
The Technological Revolution by Mikulás Teich
One of the greatest legacies of the twentieth century will be a host of unprecedented changes in science, technology, and economics, explains a historian of modern technology. -
Period: to
The Fall of Communism by Martin Malia
An American historian of Russia considers the long-range implications of the collapse of Soviet communism and the reason why many in the West cling to illusions about the USSR. -
Period: to
President Václav Havel's New Year's Day Address, 1990 by Václav Havel
Just freed from a Communist prison, the playwright and political dissident who became Czechoslovakia's president spoke to his fellow citizens about the moral choices they faced.