Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s

Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s is a book by British journalist and writer Paul Johnson, which attempts to be an outline of world history during the 20th century from the author's perspective.

Chapters

1. A Relativist World
2. The First Despotic Utopias
3. Waiting for Hitler
4. Legitimacy in Decadence
5. An Infernal Theocracy, a Celestial Chaos
6. The Last Arcadia
7. Degringolade
8. The Devils
9. The High Noon of Aggression
10. The End of Old Europe
11. The Watershed Years
12. Superpower and Genocide
13. Peace by Terror
14. The Bandung Generation
15. Caliban's Kingdoms
16. Experimenting with Half Mankind
17. The European Lazarus
18. America's Suicide Attempt
19. The Collectivist Seventies
20. The Recovery of Freedom

Description

The book describes world history beginning with the aftermath of World War I (WWI), and ending with the collapse of Communism in most of Eastern Europe. The book does not mention the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, since it was first published in 1983, and the second edition appeared in 1991, a few months before the final Soviet downfall.

The book deals mainly with the shaping of the Soviet Union in the first decades after WWI , the collapse of democracy in Central Europe due to the rise of Fascism and National Socialism, the causes that led to World War II, and its development and outcome. The book devotes a chapter (An Infernal Theocracy, a Celestial Chaos) to the development of Imperial Japan and the chaotic situation within China during the Warlord Era.

Roughly the second half of the book deals with the post-WWII events: the Cold War, the end of colonialism and the simultaneous birth of the Third World concept, the rise of the People's Republic of China and of independent India, the reconstruction and economic boom in post-war Europe, and the rise of the East Asian Tigers.

Worldview

Modern Times, as most of Johnson's works, is written in a narrative style with a political bent. Johnson is a conservative Catholic and generally treats secular (especially leftist) ideologies in a hostile manner. Throughout the book he criticizes all forms of radical political reform, which he calls "experiments in social engineering", and several of its chapters are devoted to strong criticism of extremist politicians, including Nazis and fascists, but also left-wing figures such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong, whom the author deems as vicious as Hitler.

The author is clear that he views that most of the evils of the twentieth century as a consequence of the replacement of the traditional Judeo-Christian values with secular ideologies, whose influence he deems disastrous.Johnson is also a strong supporter of freemarket Capitalism, which bolsters his hostility towards Communism. He also portrays famous Third World politicians, even icons like Gandhi and Nehru, as frivolous characters.

His work can be compared to British historian, Eric Hobsbawm's, The Age of Extremes, which discusses roughly the same period of time but from a point of view which looks more favorably upon the ideological and social changes which accompanied the 20th century's many upheavals.