A SHORT HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY

by GEOFFREY BLAINEY

New hardcover book with dustjacket. 576 pages.

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.

About the author:

Geoffrey Blainey is one of Australia's most significant and popular historians. He has written more than thirty books including The Tyranny of Distance, Triumph of the Nomads, A Short History of Australia, Black Kettle and Full Moon, and the best-selling A Short History of the World. Professor Blainey held chairs in economic history and then in plain history at the University of Melbourne for many years, and for some of those years he chaired the Australia Council.

He was a delegate to the 1998 Constitutional Convention and has served on many Commonwealth government agencies, including the Australian War Memorial, the Literature Board, the Australian Heritage Commission, the Australia-China Council, and the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. He is one of the few Australians whose biography appears in Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 2000 Professor Blainey was the recipient of Australia's highest honour, Companion in the Order of Australia (AC).

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A Short History of the Twentieth Century by Geoffrey Blainey