Challenge to Civilisation: the History of the 20th Century: 1952-1999

by Martin Gilbert

In 1952, the year this volume opens, the population of the world was approaching 3,000 million (three billion). In the second half of the century it had more than doubled, to six billion, of whom 1,000 million live in China and at least 950 million in India. Merely to maintain life at a minimum level had become a struggle for at least a quarter of the governments of the world. The refugee population had also doubled. At the same time, the destruction of the resources of the planet had increased. From fish in the oceans to trees in the rain forests, the failure of human restraint had begun to lead to irreversible changes in the ability of the planet to sustain the existing level of well-being. In many areas of the globe, that well-being is itself minimal.

Genres: History

1086 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 1999

About the author

The official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”

Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”

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Reviews

[Dhana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another tour de force by Martin Gilbert - the level of historical research is breathtaking, but more interesting are the snippets of social history that Gilbert weaves through his chapters. Eminently readable, even if you're not historian....