A Short History of the Twentieth Century

Front Cover
Penguin Random House Australia, Jun 4, 2007 - History - 576 pages
This new book from celebrated historian Geoffrey Blainey takes us on an incredible global journey through a tempestuous hundred years. His eye for detail and 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. It brilliantly evokes the excitement of the times, the triumphs and the tragedies of perhaps the most significant century of all.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2007)

Professor Geoffrey Blainey is one of Australia’s most prolific and popular historians. He has written more than forty books, including The Tyranny of Distance, Triumph of the Nomads, A Shorter History of Australia, The Rush That Never Ended, and the international bestseller A Short History of the World, which was published in a score of lands as far apart as Brazil, India, Spain and China. He has served the federal government as chairman of the Commonwealth Literary Fund, the Australia Council for the Arts, the National Council for the Centenary of Federation, and the Australia–China Council.

At the United Nations in New York, in 1988, Professor Blainey received the celebrated Britannica Prize ‘for excellence in the dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of mankind’. A recipient of Australia’s highest honour, Companion in the Order of Australia (AC), he has been officially listed for two decades by the National Trust as a ‘National Living Treasure’. He is married to the well-known biographer Ann Blainey.

Bibliographic information