This book from celebrated historian Geoffrey Blainey takes us on an incredible global journey through a tempestuous hundred years. His eye for detail and accessible, evocative style bring to vivid life many of the events that marked the 20th century: two world wars, the rise and fall of communist states, the worst economic slump in the world's history, the decline of European monarchies and empires, the ascent of the first female prime ministers, the resurgence of Asia, and the exploration of outer space.
Yet it is not only through such grand markers that we come to know and understand our history. As ever, Blainey brings the past alive by recording the minutiae of daily life - nine-year-old mothers with puny babies, the whiff of chaff and manure, the bustle of crowded cities, and the impact of newspapers, radios, television and the all-conquering car and truck. It brilliantly captures the excitement of the times, the triumphs and the tragedies of perhaps the most significant century of all.
