Reviews for History of the Twentieth Century: 1933-1951 - Martin Gilbert - Audio

The average rating for History of the Twentieth Century: 1933-1951 - Martin Gilbert - Audio based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-04 00:00:00 Aloma N Bower Should be renamed "A One-Sided, Biased and Selective History of The Twentieth Century". First of all I listened to the audiobook version of the book, which wasn't bad. What was bad, was how the book was written. The author seemed to me like an amateur. Its okay with me if you present your own (naturally, biased) view of the world, we are all biased in our own ways, and to different degrees. My problem, is when you become selective of what you write, and what you don't. My problem is when you only tell PART of the truth, and assume the rest is irrelevant. My problem is when you write the history based on your misconceptions, and not on the actual facts that are presented to you. The book is presented from a "western" point of view. It exaggerates the mistakes and cruelty of others (USSR, China, Arabs, Germany in WWII) and underestimates the wrongdoings of so called "western" countries (imperial Europe, US, Israel, ..etc) The book is very long, and it'll take me ages to point out each mistake, partial truth, biased opinion, and outright lie. But I can give you a few examples so that you can get the feel of it: * The 20th century was full of wars (no surprise here), whenever a "western" country bombs civilians for example, its nearly always stated that it was "by mistake", whenever another country does the same, the author fails to mention this, I assume he thinks the others do it by purpose, all the time. * Since I'm very familiar with the history of the middle east, I noticed many mistakes, like when he mentioned that the 10,000 (actually, it more like 30,000) people killed in Hama in 1982 by the Syrian Army were all "islamic militants" when we know that only a few hundred were. The rest were all civilians. * He portrays the 1976 attack by Israel on Egypt as if it was an act of self defense, and that not an outright act of aggression. What Nasser said or didn't say, makes no difference. * I understand that Jews suffered in WW2 (just like many other peoples), but the author throughout the book, mentions Jewish casualties regardless of how few. He even dedicates a whole paragraph to Anne Frank. But when it comes to Arab casualties, in the 1949 war for example, he does not mention them at all! It goes like this: " At the end of the hostilities, more than XX Jews were killed! Some Arabs died too." * One of the things that annoyed me the most when he mentioned that Jihad meant "Holy War". Now you don't have to know Arabic to use an Arabic-English dictionary. The concept of "holy war" only came into the Arabic language after the Crusades. The real meaning of the word Jihad جهاد is "struggle", from the root "Juhd" جهد which means "effort". * He portrays the Arab STRUGGLE against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza as "terrorist attacks against soldiers and civilans in which so-and-so died". But he fails COMPLETELY to mention that these acts of self defense (mostly) were not unprovoked. He doesn't mention any of the attacks on the Palestinian population by terrorist Jewish gangs in 1949 (like Haggana) or Jewish settlers (after 1967) or even the IDF (since 1949, and through the first Intifada). Reading the book، he gives you the impression that these Palestinian kids have nothing better to do than blow up themselves and kill some innocent "Israeli soldiers and civilians". * and so on .. I gave the book 2 stars, not 1, because its not all garbage. If you know how to think by yourself, and distinguish all the biases and personal opinions and incomplete truths, and you want to revisit the history of the previous century, then read the book. BTW, for a balanced, thorough, and entertaining treatment of middle eastern history, I really recommend "A History of The Modern Middle East" by William L. Cleveland. Its probably the best history book I have ever read.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-23 00:00:00 Bonnie Linne 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.