Rating: 
Summary: Good overview, but "blinkered" at times
Review: For the lay person, this is a good reference text that lays out the complex history of the 20th century in a relatively comprehensive fashion. Mr. Johnson's command over US and European history is masterful, comprehensive and yet able to bring out the broad themes that defined the conflict between Germany and the rest of the Western powers...which indeed is a huge portion of modern history.However, the treatment of the rest of the world in broad-brush at best, and almost bigoted at worst. Mr. Johnson carries over a very restrictive view of the nation state and its protagonists to the complex cultures of China, India and Japan, and to an extent, even in Russia. Mr. Johnson settles often for an easy treatment of the leaders of these countries as simpletons, thugs or lazy elite...and uses these assumptions to explain historical developments that have much deeper socio-political undercurrents. 20/20 hindsight has proven the world view of these leaders to be wrong, but real insight into the human factor of these mistakes is needed before truly "historical" conclusions are drawn. It would have been better if Mr. Johnson had instead elected to limit the scope of his book to subject matter that he is a master of than to extend it to areas where deep trade-offs are made between coverage and historical accuracy.
Rating: 
Summary: Utopia Postponed
Review: At a time when most people get their history from movies and TV, with all the confusion, fragmentation and distortion inherent in these media, Paul Johnson offers an alternative: in lucid, nimble prose he presents modern world history, from the 1920s to the 90s, as a fascinating, if sobering, narrative.
He seeks out the hidden connections and inner workings of historical events that have been obscured by too much detail and partisanship even to the observant contemporary reader who "witnessed" these events. To be sure, his representation is not "value-neutral". He makes no bones about his distaste for left-wing intellectuals with ambitions to remake the world; but he is equally hard on right-wing extremists. In fact, totalitarianism of the left or right, social engineering on a grand scale, moral relativism and decline of personal responsibility are, in his opinion, the decisive influences on the history of the 20th century.
Under the heading "The first despotic utopias" he gives us illuminating portraits of Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler. These men found countless imitators in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, and, after decolonization, in Africa. He decries attempts of some churches to transform religious energy into secular utopianism. The magnitude of Stalin's tyranny was scarcely grasped in the world outside Russia. Scientists and writers accepted Stalin's propaganda with the greatest credulity:"They wanted to be duped". The ruthlessness and folly of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini culminated in a mutual corruption process: if one of the dictators got away with a bold scheme, the others imitated it. This led to bloody territorial wars, large-scale social engineering coupled with genocide, mass resettlement of ethnic groups, and slave labor.
Stalin's ability to pose as a moderate fooled Churchill and Roosevelt. The Cold War dates from the immediate aftermath of the Yalta Conference, when Eastern Europe and most of the Balkans were lost to totalitarianism. Churchill made his "Iron Curtain" speech under Truman's sponsorship in 1946. Proxy wars erupted in Korea, the Middle East, and Vietnam, triggering an arms race. Colonial empires unravelled. The colonies were cut loose without adequate preparation, which led to the rise of Third-World dictators. The beneficiaries of decolonization were the vote manipulators: professional politicians who saw the res publica in terms of votes, not in terms of justice. "Charismatic personalities" assumed leadership: Nehru, Sukarno, U Nu, Nasser, Nkrumah, Idi Amin. The Cold War extended to Africa.
In China, Mao conducted politics as theatre, in a manner reminiscent of Hitler, with an elaborate cult of personality at its center. Again, western intellectuals were fooled.
In the U.S., failure to distinguish between image and reality led to regrettable missteps. Well-intentioned programs backfired: Johnson's War On Poverty actually destabilized poor black families further by making it profitable for them to split up. The law of unintended consequences also asserted itself in the vast expansion of education, which resulted in a huge surplus of intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals, all critical of authority. This led to the social and political upheavals of the Sixties and Seventies.
In the 80s, state-directed collectivism was replaced by free enterprise in Europe, America, and Mexico. Strong leadership in Britain and the U.S. (Johnson credits Thatcher and Reagan) led to the dissemination of free-market concepts in Eastern Europe and the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire.
If the title "Modern Times" strikes a Chaplinesque, vaudevillian note: there is enough absurdity and pathos in our modern history to suggest such a view.
Boundaries between conviction, opinion and partisanship are fluid, especially in contemporary historiography; but the discriminating reader will know the difference.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive in detail and hits the bull's eye.
Review: In my version of this book, this quote closes out the first chapter: "Among the advanced races, the decline and ultimately the collapse of the religious impulse would leave a huge vacuum. The history of modern times is in great part the history of how that vacuum had been filled. Nietszche rightly perceived that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power', which offered a far more comprehensive and in the end more plausible explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud. In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology. Those who had once filled the ranks of the totalitarian clergy would become totalitarian politicians. And, above all, the Will to Power would produce a new kind fo messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatever, and with unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind. The end of the old order, with an unguided world adrift in a relativistic universe, was a summons to such gangster-statesmen to emerge. They were not slow to make their appearance." [p.48] And from there, Johnson proceeds to sketch his outlines of the would-be political messiahs, first in the Soviet Union, then Italy, Japan, and Germany, leading to World War II and then to its sorry sequels in post-colonial Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and beyond (the "Bandung generation", as he calls it). The book is very comprehensive in detail, both to show the completeness with which these leaders were able to silence dissent with violence, and were led by their own hubris to over-extend their empires beyond their capabilities. But the book is more than just a geopolicial analysis of the world during this time. In between the conventional thumbnail sketches of history, literature, or pop culture in any period is a look at those ideas that may have passed for A-grade intellectual thought at the time, but have not survived the period. Johnson talks about these ideas, and the popular works at the time which appeared to confirm them, in order to get a glimpse of how the general population viewed their world, and how it affected their willingness to acquiesce to leaders who turned into the megalomaniacs we know and loathe. Some may find Johnson's pro-Catholic view too much of a slant to view this book without a grain of salt. However, at least in Europe, the Church, along with the rule of law, were two circuit-breakers to autocratic rule that were discarded in the darkest days leading up to World War II. And as Johnson asserts, this left a vacuum to be filled, and was done so with an experiment of ideologies that left much to be desired as far as promoting a healthy economy and population. The leaders of the post-colonial "Third World" (a term that originally conveyed the idea that these countries would bring about a new international morality) only followed the same plan, and often led to the same brutal results. There are several other philosophical, historical, and economic ideas that Johnson sets forth in his 750+ pages in contributing to the overall dour condition of the world during the 20th century. If this seems overwhelming, it's not too much of a simplification to suggest that this book is longhand for what Orwell was describing in his best works.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bloody Century
Review: There are several reasons why I find Paul Johnson's Modern Times a useful, one volume modern history, one which I have read and re-read on several occasions. It is a fairly objective account, covering most of the 20th Century, and is less opinionated than Johnson's History of the American People, certainly less biased and facile than the common Marxist approach of filtering every event through the economics of rich and poor. Johnson's objectivity endures his discovery of certain themes, among them: the expansion of the state and its relation to war, and the consequences of the loss of traditional belief to a relativistic world view. Johnson prefers a wide vista, encompassing not only dates and events, but major and minor players, their motivations, and parallel movements in literature, science, and philosophy. He proves as adept at discussing Hitler and Stalin as Sartre and existentialism. Although he sees the influence of ideas, he is not held captive by them. He recognizes that ideas are only one color in the kaleidoscope of human behavior-and what is history but an extended look at the manifestations of human behavior? He uses his secondary sources without becoming overwhelmed by them, and his thorough documentation is a great reminder of how history books are supposed to be written. A British historian and former Marxist, Johnson portrays history in all its moral ambiguity, reading no country with a jaundiced eye. His narrative is not simply the good guys versus the bad guys, although good and bad there are. Many historians disregard this moral complexity; they are quick to praise and condemn, issuing half truths and one-sided perspectives. Johnson is more conscious of Disraeli's remark that a politician is a creature of circumstance, a practical man rather than a philosopher, whose morality is manifest in action. Circumstance and context contribute more to one's understanding of history than the desire for moral absolutism. My only regret is that the book's last revision came in 1991. Much of import has happened since, and I would like to see another revision take these into account.
Rating:
Summary: A great history with a huge blind spot
Review: This is a vivid history of the totalitarian systems of the 20th century, which everyone despises. However, the tacit moral which Johnson wants us to draw is that these horrors came about when people abandoned Catholicism. The blind spot, of course, is that Catholicism was the first totalitarian system in Europe. You were not allowed to question any of its dogmas, or it burned you to death. Rewriting history, lying, and forgery were all standard practice. It is instructive to view Hitler and Stalin as merely trying to bring back the "good old days" of Medieval totalitarianism.
Rating:
Summary: A Magisterial History of the 20th Century
Review: Paul Johnson provides an insightful history of the development of the 20th century showing the links between relativism and the growth of the tyrannical state. Johnson ably demonstrates that the power of the state grew dramatically, but its power to do good very little, if at all. I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to follow one of the essential themes of the century most characterized by state-sponsored murder.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Details, Theses Need Working
Review: The first thing to remember when reading Johnson is to forget about meaningless ideological terms like "conservative" and "liberal" (especially when used by Americans they come to mean the opposites they originally meant). The one thing that Johnston makes clear in his book is that ideology has been the bane of minkind in the 20th Cen. and the major cause of most man-made calamities. As such Johnson is asking us to return to a non-ideological world bounded by reason and common sense. The book however is not narrative history writ large; it is more a moral history of the 20th Century with several leading theses which Johnston returns to with ever increasing import and relevance. The greatest of these is that ideology has been the waster of mankind and the destoyer of moral integrity. The greatest challenge he sets up for those who see the world in ideological opposites is the notion that there is really no functional and moral difference between Fascist, Nazi and Communist regimes (at least in what kinds of states they produce) --- all of them in practise have lead to dictatorship, a loss of basic freedoms, and, in their most striking characteristic, mass murder perpetrated by the state. He is most likely right in this assertion and no doubt historians looking back within the next 20 years will probably see the advent of ideological states of the extreme left and right as a symtomatic of the 20th century and make no real distinction between them, functionally they are the same (much in the same way as we now make little distinction between individual barbarian tribes who attacked Rome). That these ideological excesses were perpetrated by the state because of some notion that the developments in science imbued, coloured these ideologies with the notion of the attainability of absolute truth once the underlying truths of "history" were found, that is another question. It is also one that Johnston comes most close to proving, since it is clear that ideologues with no understanding of such concepts such as natural selection --- Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin --- really believed that there were such things as "superior" forms of government and "superior" races of people. A conclusion that could not be reached by anyone with even rudimentary understanding of Darwin's tracts and the elementary genetic theory only then emerging. So there is at least as much worship of anti-rationalism in the thought of Stalin (class enemies are everywhere), and Hitler (man finds his ultimate expression only when he submerges himself in the mass of the State) as there is in the notion that the world can be understood in terms of scientific determinism. The one really strange (frankly wierd in my estimation) is the sometimes emergent thesis that the power of the state to kill and take away rights has been a function of the growth of science and ideology which "disregards the traditional Judeao-Christian notion of individual responsibility." Although Johnston asserts this from time to time he never really goes beyond to prove it. Among other things he never defines what this notion of "personal responsibility" is, where it comes from and how it manifests itself. If we do not know what it is, it is difficult to know if we have lost it. Also how does it explain the excesses of China and Japan in the 20th Century, two states with no Judeo-Christian tradition (or have they always been barbarian states?). The power of the state to wield total power has been greatly enhanced in the 20th Century, and therefore its power to kill, horrendous societies and mass killings have however been with us before the 20th Century: how would one explain such horrors as the slaughter of the Cathars, of the Crusades, the Mongol invasions, the horrible excesses of the Hundred Years War and the slaughters in Chin Dynasty China? They have also been with us in the present where as in Bosnia and Kosovo individuals from two Judeo-Christian faiths receive absolution of personal responsibility directly from their respective Judeo-Christian faiths! In all of the cases above, horror and state enforced mayhem either existed in Judeo-Christian societies or existed in areas where Judeo-Christianity never reached. That Johnston does not deal with these issues is I think, an even deeper knowledge that Johnston knows this point, although interesting, is ultimately nothing more than conjecture. The true brilliance of Johnston is really in the details. His ability to look at different issues in a new light is really amazing. His style is novel, quirky, and always refreshing to read. Whether you agree with him or not he forces you to think: "there is no moral difference between murdering a person because of their class or because of their race" --- statements like this strongly underline his main idea that Racist ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini are really even more disfunctional varients of communism. After reading Johnston one realises that notions of mutually exclusive ideologies contain within then an underlying logic of increasing state power beyond the reasonable limitations of Parliamentary Democracy -- as such Naziism and Communism are both sides of the same coin --- Jonstone does us a favour by pointing this out for us in cogent, intellectual, and ripping read.
Rating:
Summary: Slightly biased, but highly readable book
Review: Although this book is worth reading for anyone interested in recent history and international affairs, there are two things I'd like to point out. First, the title of this book should have been "Modern Times from the Anglo-American perspective". This would have better reflected the author's position. He is a well-known British author who obviously puts the US over Europe as a natural British ally. There is an Anglo-American bias in his narrative. Although he is openly criticizes relativism, he is not totally free of relativism himself. He often presents some things done by Germany or Japan as immoral and evil and the same things done by the UK or US as a pragmatic necessity. Second, his pages about Russia are interesting, and his insights are very impressive. But I had a feeling that the sources he used were somewhat selective. He didn't usually use the sources that would contradict his point of view. To my surprise he didn't use or mention "The origins of the Russian Communism" by Nicholas Berdyaev, a classic book on the subject that became, for example, a basis of Carroll Quigley's chapter on Russia in his "Tragedy and Hope". Overall this is an impressive and well-written book that shows the Anglo-American perspective on history and international affairs in the 20th century. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the 25 most important conservative books
Review: This is a brilliant and highly-readable discussion of the history of the 20th century, unburdened by the liberal world view. If you enjoy reading history, Modern Times will be a great pleasure for you, as will other works by Paul Johnson.
Rating:
Summary: Scathing Critique of Cultural Relativism
Review: Johnson's massive narrative of 20th century history is a riveting account of the ravages wrought by moral relativism, social engineering and economic authoritarianism. This book is packed with interesting facts and commentary on virtually every political event. The author's view is out in the open to judge appropriately. I disagree with his fundamental distrust of human reason and ability. His cultural analysis does not go deep enough due to his conservative outlook. But it is a considerable starting point.
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