Dictionary of American History, Vol. 5 - James Adams - Hardcover Book

More than two years ago, I had launched myself into reading Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, a book that gave me some solid knowledge in brief about the world history, and upon finishing it mid-last-year, was amazed by his way of writing [You can read its review here, if need be]. But alas, the book ended just as WW2 was about to be set into motion. To compensate for the remaining, I picked up this book by Martin Gilbert, a cheap copy that I had found in one of the second-hand book-sales.

With that in mind, History of the Twentieth Century did satisfy me with what I was looking for: the political world history in the twentieth century, of which personally I lacked a lot of knowledge. But however, this book did not go beyond that. It was all about wars, racism, violence, number of people dead, and such ...

I also found at least three fundamental errors in the book (will insert an example here once I re-find it). Having said that, I make it a point to mention here, that unless one wants to know in general, superficial political knowledge of the history of the twentieth century, she should rather look for another title. Also, to be kept in mind, is that this book is a condensed edition of Gilbert's three separate books that made up his history of the twentieth century.

Another disappointing fact about the book was, the two dedicated chapters for the two World Wars, did not contain anything else, but only the account of the wars. As a result, nothing has been mentioned about what happens at all in other parts of the world where the World Wars were not taking place.

The good thing about reading the book was that I came to know a lot about what happened in the century. The cascading effect in political history that came to the eventuality of both the World Wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the end of the Soviet era. The language is easy, the book is a fast-read, although nothing very 'interesting' to contemplate upon (unlike as in Nehru's book). Contains 26 good maps to refer to while reading, and 75 pages of Index.