A History of the Twentieth Century, Vol III

by Martin Gilbert

In 1952, the year this volume opens, the population of the world was approaching 3,000 million (three billion). In the second half of the century it had more than doubled, to six billion, of whom 1,000 million live in China and at least 950 million in India. Merely to maintain life at a minimum level had become a struggle for at least a quarter of the governments of the world. The refugee population had also doubled. At the same time, the destruction of the resources of the planet had increased. From fish in the oceans to trees in the rain forests, the failure of human restraint had begun to lead to irreversible changes in the ability of the planet to sustain the existing level of well-being. In many areas of the globe, that well-being is itself minimal.

Genres: History, World History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

Published October 20, 1999

About the author

The official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”

Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”

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Reviews

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a magnificent overview of the last fifty years of the twentieth century by one of Britain's leading historians.

The book is presented in a strictly chronological style, with each chapter covering a specific calendar year. This approach allows the reader to appreciate the flow of events in the order they occurred rather than encountering them within the context of the writer's subsequent interpretation. Despite this, the book does not read as if it were a series of news reports. The historian does interpret, analyse and sift in order to create a coherent narrative of an extradoridany epoch in world history.

An illustration of the benefit of this approach is, for instance, the story of the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We encounter these events in the book in a similar way that many of us experienced them in 1990 and 1991 - as unexpected, dramatic and amazing, rather than as the logical outcome of a totalitarian state facing financial collapse.

The author has been careful to include events from across the world - as far as such an overview will permit. We meet politicians in Asia and Africa who we might otherwise ignore and natural disasters that we may have only vaguely remembered but which affected entire nations.

Themes - of course - do emerge. Among the author's favourites are the ravages of war and political violence in history's bloodiest century, advances in technology and health care set against the backdrop of widespread global poverty, the rise of nationalism, tribalism and ethnic conflict and the rise and fall of communism.

The writer's own interests and biases also come through, though not (to me) in an intrusive way. His regular reports on the incidence of road traffic deaths worldwide is important, for instance. His descriptions of the work of the United Nations are interesting and go beyond the traditional focus on its peacekeeping role. The author also appears to have a positive view of British Prime Minister John Major as well as being a friend, not uncritically, of the state of Israel.

Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Martin Gilbert could have made more of the growth of radical Islam, which before 9/11 could easily have looked like a side show on the world stage. His analysis of the growth of the environmental movement is often limited to anti-pollution laws passed in the United States and does not appear to have anticipated the major grass roots interest in sustainability that has become a mainstream concern in the first decade of the new century.

These latter issues are minor criticisms, however, in a book that is a treasure of information and analysis. Its extensive index enables the reader to follow discreet topics if one wishes and the book will be of interest to both the general reader and the specialist.

One favourite quote sees the author indulging in just the slightest self-congratulation when describing the events leading up to the first Gulf War. He is quoting President Bush Senior: "In the first few weeks of the crisis, I happened to be reading a book on World War II by the British historian Martin Gilbert. I saw a direct analogy between what was occurring in Kuwait and what the Nazis had done, especially in Poland....I saw a chilling parallel with what the Iraqi occupiers were doing in Kuwait."

I imagined how much fun the author must have had writing that sentence, knowing that his work was influencing world leaders as they pondered major foreign policy responses. One of the spin-offs of being a brilliant historian, I guess.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 900 plus pages, each chapter covering the years from 1952 to 1999, there is a lot of information. Stunning and jaw-dropping information, even for a person who lived through all but a decade of it, all well-researched and carefully thought out and vetted in addition to more than 100 pages of maps, bibliography, and index at the back of the book.
This third volume of his History of the Twentieth Century addresses the Cold War between Communism and capitalistic countries, especially in areas where Communists seemed determined to take advantage of civil wars and step in to attempt to get that country to become Communist. So, of course, the book also documents the amazing toppling of Communism, starting in 1989, in many countries associated with the Soviet Union. Other themes addressed in the book are the considerable strife in the Middle East, Africa, India, and some of those places in South America where it reared its ugly head. Medical advances, technological advances, the space race, the work of the United Nations, and the awful curse of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" also were covered with much detail.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost 1000 pages- done in one month
Was a good, quick read

[Hani · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this book, it is stated that ‘In March, Iranian forces attacked Halabja, a Kurdish town, using chemical weapons, resulting in the death of 5000 Kurdish civilians…’. This is a significant distortion of historical events.
https://1997-2001.state.gov/briefings...

[George L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volumes 1 & 2 of this trilogy were really informative and lively. This 3rd volume often read like a summary of New York Times headlines. At times, it seemed like Gilbert was just going through the motions in order to complete the book. Read the the 1st 2 volumes before this one.

[Peter Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A depressing read. The necessarily abbreviated history of each year was rather like news headlines - more focus on the negative news and lacking a full context.