Empires in Conflict: The History of the 20th Century: 1900-1933: v. 1 (The History of the Twentieth Century)

From Britain’s ‘greatest living factual historian’ (Paul Johnson, Evening Standard), the first volume of the history of the world in the twentieth century.

"What a terrible disappointment the twentieth century has been," was Winston Churchill's comment in 1922. One world war had already ended, more than six million soldiers had been killed, and four vast empires had been destroyed. A second was yet to come in which more than forty-six million died and which brought in its wake the arms race, the cold war and the nuclear age. But as well as being the century of mass destruction – both human and ecological – the twentieth century has also been a century of mass production, consumption, cultural diversity and phenomenal scientific progress.

The century began in the age of horse-drawn travel with motor cars in their infancy.
Within a decade, aeroplanes were flying, diesel replaced steam, oil replaced coal and, six decades later, man landed on the moon.
In 1900, explorers were still charting much of the planet for the first time; both north and south Poles had yet to be reached. As the century ended, space exploration was already three decades old, and man had seen the first close-up photographs of Mars and Venus.

The first volume of Martin Gilbert's three-volume narrative history of the century charts its first thirty-three years, closing with Roosevelt as the newly-elected President of the United States and the inauguration of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Few can match Gilbert's extraordinary ability to muster complex factual detail into rich and compelling prose. He moves from continent to continent and country to country with ease to convey the dramas, struggles and achievements of the century. But as well as chronicling the wars, revolutions and political upheavals, Gilbert looks in detail at the diseases and natural disasters that plagued the early part of the century, the rise and fall of religious movements, the advance of science and medicine, the power of mass communications, the developments in art, literature, film, theatre, cartoons, poems, graffiti and song – and much more.