Modern Times Revised Edition : World from the Twenties to the Nineties, The (Perennial Classics)
By Paul M. Johnson
Einstein looms large over Johnson's narrative, as do others who sought to harness the forces of nature and society: men like Mao Zedong, "a big, brutal, earthy and ruthless peasant," and Adolf Hitler, creator of "a brutal, secure, conscience-less, successful, and, for most Germans, popular regime." Johnson takes a contentious conservative viewpoint throughout: he calls the 1960s "America's suicide attempt," deems the Watergate affair "a witch-hunt ... run by liberals in the media," and deems the rise of Margaret Thatcher a critical element in Western civilization's "recovery of freedom"--arguable propositions all, but ones advanced in a stimulating and well-written narrative that provides much food for thought in the course of its more than 800 pages. --Gregory McNamee--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Robert A. Nisbet,New York Times Book Review
"Truly a distinguished work of history...Modern Times unites historical and critical consciousness. It is far from being a simple chronicle, though a vast wealth of events and personages and historical changes fill it....We can take a great deal of intellectual pleasure in this book."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
(All Editorial Reviews)
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Modern Times Revised Edition : World from the Twenties to the Nineties, The (Perennial Classics)
by Paul M. Johnson
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Editorial Reviews
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The history of the 20th century is marked by two great narratives: nations locked in savage wars over ideology and territory, and scientists overturning the received wisdom of preceding generations. For Paul Johnson, the modern era begins with one of the second types of revolutions, in 1919, when English astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington translated observations from a solar eclipse into proof of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which turned Newtonian physics on its head. Eddington's research became an international cause célèbre: "No exercise in scientific verification, before or since, has ever attracted so many headlines or become a topic of universal conversation," Johnson writes, and it made Einstein into science's first real folk hero.
Einstein looms large over Johnson's narrative, as do others who sought to harness the forces of nature and society: men like Mao Zedong, "a big, brutal, earthy and ruthless peasant," and Adolf Hitler, creator of "a brutal, secure, conscience-less, successful, and, for most Germans, popular regime." Johnson takes a contentious conservative viewpoint throughout: he calls the 1960s "America's suicide attempt," deems the Watergate affair "a witch-hunt ... run by liberals in the media," and deems the rise of Margaret Thatcher a critical element in Western civilization's "recovery of freedom"--arguable propositions all, but ones advanced in a stimulating and well-written narrative that provides much food for thought in the course of its more than 800 pages. --Gregory McNamee--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Robert A. Nisbet,New York Times Book Review
"Truly a distinguished work of history...Modern Times unites historical and critical consciousness. It is far from being a simple chronicle, though a vast wealth of events and personages and historical changes fill it....We can take a great deal of intellectual pleasure in this book."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Stephen Spender, The Atlantic
"A work of intellect and imagination."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal
"Frequently surprises, even startles us with new views ofd past events and fresh looks at the characters of the chief world movers and shakers, in politics, the military, economics, science, religion, and philosophy of six decades."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Peter Loewenberg, Los Angeles Times
"Johnson's insights are often briliant and of value in their startling freshness."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-- David Gress, Commentary
"A marvelously incisive and synthesizing account." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-- Peter Loewenberg, Los Angeles Times
"Johnson's insights are often briliant and of value in their startling freshness."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-- Stephen Spender, The Atlantic
"A work of intellect and imagination."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
David Gress, Commentary
"A marvelously incisive and synthesizing account."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Foreign Affairs
"Wide-ranging and quirky, this history of our times (since World War I) hits all the highlights and hot spots: the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the 1980s...A letter-day Mencken, Johnson is witty, gritty, and compulsively readable."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
The classic world history of the events, ideas, and personalities of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Paul Johnson is a leading historian and journalist whose historical works have been translated into many languages. Born into a Roman Catholic family in Lancashire, England, he has remained a practicing Catholic and has covered every papal conclave since the 1950s. Among his books are Modern Times, A History of the Jews, Intellectuals, The Birth of the Modern, and A History of the English People. Johnson writes a weekly essay for the Spectator and is a frequent contributor to The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers and magazines throughout the world.
He lives in London.
Brilliant Prose, Highly Questionable History, September 9, 2002
Reviewer: R. J Szasz (Tokyo, Japan Japan) - See all my reviews
The first thing to remember when reading Johnson is to forget about meaningless ideological terms like "conservative" and "liberal" (especially when used by Americans they come to mean the opposites they originally meant). The one thing that Johnston makes clear in his book is that ideology has been the bane of minkind in the 20th Cen. and the major cause of most man-made calamities. As such Johnson is asking us to return to a non-ideological world bounded by reason and common sense.
The book however is not narrative history writ large; it is more a "moral" history of the 20th Century with several leading themes which Johnston returns to with ever increasing import and relevance. The greatest of these is that ideology, left and right, has been the waster of mankind and the destoyer of moral integrity.
The greatest challenge he sets up for those who see the world in ideological opposites is the notion that there is really no functional and moral difference between Fascist, Nazi and Communist regimes (at least in what kinds of states they produce) --- all of them in practise have lead to dictatorship, a loss of basic freedoms, and, in their most striking characteristic, mass murder perpetrated by the state. He is most likely right in this assertion and no doubt historians looking back within the next 20 years will probably see the advent of ideological states of the extreme left and right as a symtomatic of the 20th century and make no real distinction between them, functionally they are the same (much in the same way as we now make little distinction between individual barbarian tribes who attacked Rome).
That these ideological excesses were perpetrated by the state because of some notion that the developments in science imbued, coloured these ideologies with the notion of the attainability of absolute truth once the underlying truths of "history" were found, that is another question. It is also one that Johnston comes most close to proving, since it is clear that ideologues with no understanding of such concepts such as natural selection --- Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin --- really believed that there were such things as "superior" forms of government and "superior" races of people. A conclusion that could not be reached by anyone with even rudimentary understanding of Darwin's tracts and the elementary gene theory (only then emerging).
So there is at least as much worship of anti-rationalism in the thought of Stalin (class enemies are everywhere), and Hitler (man finds his ultimate expression only when he submerges himself in the mass of the State) as there is in the notion that the world can be understood in terms of scientific determinism as formulated by politicians (read Stalist behaviourists and Hitler's misunderstanding of even basic laws of inherited traits).
The one really strange thing (frankly wierd in my estimation) is the sometimes emergent thesis that the power of the state to kill and take away rights has been a function of the growth of science and ideology which "disregards the traditional Judeao-Christian notion of individual responsibility."
Although Johnston asserts this from time to time he never really goes beyond to prove it. Among other things he never defines what this notion of "personal responsibility" is, where it comes from and how it manifests itself. If we do not know what it is, it is difficult to know if we have lost it. Also, how does it explain the excesses of China and Japan in the 20th Century, two states with no Judeo-Christian tradition (or have they always been barbarian states? --- as Pat Robertson, the American Taliban, has argued).
The power of the state to wield total power has been greatly enhanced in the 20th Century, and therefore its power to kill. Horrendous societies and mass killings have however been with us before the 20th Century: how would one explain such horrors as the slaughter of the Cathars, of the Crusades, the Mongol invasions, the horrible excesses of the Hundred Years War and the slaughters in Chin Dynasty China? They have also been with us in the present where, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, individuals from two Judeo-Christian faiths receive absolution of personal responsibility directly from their respective Judeo-Christian faiths! Faith condones and actually encourages violence.
In all of the cases above, horror and state enforced mayhem either existed in Judeo-Christian societies or existed in areas where Judeo-Christianity never reached. That Johnson does not deal with these issues is I think, an even deeper knowledge that Johnston knows this point, although interesting, is ultimately nothing more than conjecture.
The true brilliance of Johnston is really in the details. His ability to look at different issues in a new light is really amazing. His style is novel, quirky (some would say highly idoesyncratic) and always refreshing to read. Whether you agree with him or not he forces you to think: "there is no moral difference between murdering a person because of their class or because of their race" --- statements like this strongly underline his main idea that Racist ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini are really even more disfunctional varients of communism.
After reading Johnston one realises that notions of mutually exclusive ideologies contain within then an underlying logic of increasing state power beyond the reasonable limitations of Parliamentary Democracy -- as such Naziism and Communism are both sides of the same coin --- Johnson does us a favour by pointing this out for us in cogent, intellectual, and ripping read. With prose like these one is liable to forgive most of his foibles (his defence of Nixon being an exception --- an extremely bad chapter, that should be removed).
All in all a very good read. Highly recommended with the caveats above.
* * * * * *
The History of Woe and Wishes, November 10, 2002
Reviewer: Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews
The liberal view of history is so widespread that any deviation is subject to immediate criticism. Johnson goes after modern cultural icons with vigor, examining and reassessing all the way. He has perfected a writing style that is highly readable and entertaining with common components: Broad assumptions, intricate details supporting his idea and unique, incredibly interesting biographies of those that made a difference - known or unknown.
The 20th century IS the collectivist century. Every variant of collectivism from communism, fascism, tribalism, socialism and religious classism has been tried with catastrophic results. The eagerness with which "leaders" (most from academia) experimented on whole populations is truly horrific. Glowing theories always gave way to human suffering. Millions have been sacrificed in the name of collectivism just this century - USSR, China, Germany, Cambodia, Turkey, Africa...
Oddly, speaking ill of this most anti-democratic "theory" is seen as somehow impolite. Johnson records the fight and the fighters (on both sides) of this battle. Naturally the US and Britain emerge with glowing marks - and why not? Those two have saved the world many times. Germany would have won WWI and WWII without US intervention. Europe would be one vast socialist graveyard without the opposition of Truman. Korea, Japan and parts of South America would be "Peoples States" without our help. Relativism has spread to almost all facets of human existence with perhaps the most dangerous one being that all cultures are morally equivalent. This book aptly demonstrates that this has not - and is not - true.
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