Heather Gorsett’s Reviews > Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties > Status Update

The final chapter, Chapter 20: The Recovery of Freedom, traces humanity’s leaps in science, technology, and sociobiology, revealing how understanding nature transformed life. Yet, despite progress, moral decay, social breakdown, and political failure persist. The warning is clear: only ethics, responsibility, and wisdom can turn knowledge into true human flourishing.

Chapter 19, The Collectivist Seventies, argues the decade’s crises were not accidental but the result of Keynesian excess, anti-business politics, monetary mismanagement, and moral drift. Europe recovered by rejecting utopia; America faltered by distrusting authority; the UN decayed without moral clarity. The 1970s mark not capitalism’s failure, but a loss of confidence in individual responsibility and freedom.

In Chapter 17: The European Lazarus, Europe rises from the dead after 1945—unexpectedly—having seemingly destroyed itself. Its revival is not driven by youth, rebellion, or radical ideas, but through steady, unglamorous leaders: Adenauer in Germany, De Gasperi in Italy, and De Gaulle in France. These men were old, religious, rule-bound, anti-utopian—yet they were the ones to resurrect Europe …

In Chapter 16: Experimenting with Half Mankind, Mao treats China as a giant laboratory, launching political experiments driven by ideology and willpower rather than reality—with catastrophic human costs. He dismantled authority, weaponized youth, turned ideology into violence, and turned personal vendettas into national terror. The Cultural Revolution was not an accident but engineered chaos, ending in exhaustion.

Chapter 15: Caliban’s Kingdom” deliberately evokes Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where Caliban is the native inhabitant of a conquered island—both savage and pitiable, resisting colonial authority yet morally ambiguous. Johnson casts postcolonial Africa in a similar light: a land rich in potential, but plagued by internal disorder, violence, and exploitation after the departure of European powers.

In Chapter 14: The Bandung Generation, the 1955 Bandung Conference symbolizes the rise of a post-colonial world, as newly independent nations sought solidarity and autonomy from both Western and Soviet powers. Yet instead of delivering freedom and peace, the movement often gave rise to regimes more brutal than colonial rule. Algeria stands as a stark warning of what happens when ideology overrides morality.

Chapter 13: Peace by Terror shows how the post-WWII peace of the 1950s was maintained not through diplomacy, but through nuclear threats, secrecy, manipulation, and fear. It marks the start of the Cold War, with the rise of NATO, the Marshall Plan, the fall of nationalist China, and growing U.S. global involvement. At home, McCarthy's hysteria clashed with Eisenhower’s quiet, calculated leadership.

Chapter 12: Superpower and Genocide, examines the pivotal final phase of World War II, covering the Holocaust, the collapse of Nazi Germany, the atomic bombings, and the handling of war crimes. It explores Japanese and Soviet atrocities, the treatment of POWs, and the post-war tribunals. The chapter reveals how realpolitik and moral compromise ultimately undermined the Allies’ claim to a purely just victory.

Chapter 10: The End of Old Europe, tells of the aftermath of WWI and the collapse of traditional monarchies in Europe. The profound transformation gave way to new political entities like Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany. These totalitarian regimes reshaped society through radical ideologies and centralized power, marking a departure from the previous political order.

Chapter 9: The High Noon of Aggression, examines the escalation of global conflicts during the 1930s, focusing on the aggressive expansionism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. These nations' actions marked a critical juncture in the lead-up to WWII, highlighting the failure of appeasement and the international community's inability to effectively counteract totalitarian ambitions.