A HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: Volume One: 1900-1933. By Martin Gilbert . William Morrow . $35. 928 pages Martin Gilbert, the prolific historian and official biographer of Winston Churchill, has undertaken to record in three volumes the history of the 20th century. Despite the considerable obstacles this project presents, Gilbert has done remarkably well in this first installment. "The 20th century has witnessed some of humanity's greatest achievements and some of its worst excesses," he says at the outset. "By any scale of values it has been a century of improvement in the quality of life for millions of people, yet also one of decline in many parts of the globe." Although, as the century opened, imperial wars were being waged in South Africa and China, a general belief in progress persisted. Yet the years leading up to and including World War I and its awful consequences would shatter that confidence. Gilbert marches these years through his pages in grim and dreadful step. He records both the advances humanity makes and the mounting horrors it commits. "What a disappointment the 20th century has been," Gilbert quotes Churchill as saying in 1922. In words that resonated particularly for people of conservative bent, Churchill described his sense of devastation now that the Old World had been swept away: "We have seen in every country a dissolution, a weakening of the bonds, a challenge to those principles, a decay of faith, an abridgment of hope, on which the structure and ultimate existence of civilized society depends." To provide an assessment of the results of this wreckage, Gilbert quotes the French poet Paul Valery's address to a graduating class in 1932: "You live in interesting times. Interesting times are always enigmatic times that promise no rest, no prosperity or continuity or security. Never has humanity joined so much power and so much disarray, so much anxiety and so many playthings, so much knowledge and so much uncertainty."" In the last 10 years, the turmoil that engulfed the world in this century has subsided. The disaster of World War I and the calamitous rise of fascism and communism have been often told. But in his brisk retelling, Gilbert grips the reader, who vividly sees again the unhappy results of human folly. Gilbert's method is straightforwardly chronological, with one chapter devoted to each year. As one might expect, his history is Eurocentric, specifically upon London. India, part of the British Empire, is given attention while China, weak and far away, is, at least in this volume, on the periphery. Then again, this book merely reflects the reality of the world it describes. Europe was then the center, and the European empires really did rule the world, although they soon would be smashed and the United States would be called upon to restore European order. Presumably Gilbert's two subsequent volumes will reflect the shifting weight of the world's leading powers. Although this book is primarily a political history, Gilbert introduces the technological inventions that have marked the century, such as the automobile and the submarine. He notes deaths by disease, like the plague and influenza, and by accidents; he carefully records the steady increase of deaths from auto accidents through the years. At the beginning of A History of the Twentieth Century, Victoria sits on the British throne. By its end, Hitler has become chancellor of Germany, and Franklin D. Roosevelt is the newly elected American president. A reliable and engaging guide, Gilbert deftly takes the reader through the incredible tangle of events and crosscurrents that has marked the development of this century. Back to Cry Havoc #20 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com