Rating: 
Summary: First example is clearly wrong
Review: Johnson, who is an Anglophile conservative historian who hates modern art and opines on stuff he has no competence in, but nevertheless is an entertaining read, got one thing clearly wrong: the first pages (you can read on-line) describe Arthur Eddington's 'proof' of Einstein's general theory, by taking photographs of a solar eclipse. However, Eddington's proof was flawed, as pointed out in the book "Einstein's Luck" by J. Walker. This does not detract from the point of the example (moral and scientific relativism ushered in the 20th century), but it's a caveat to watch out for: just because something is referenced by a footnote doesn't make it true. Or as a Frenchman once said, the footnotes are more interesting that the main text sometimes.
BTW, I have not read this book, but don't let that stop you from recommending this review as helpful.
I will read this book, but buy it used to make sure the author gets no royalty.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Written History
Review: Accurate "History" is always difficult for reasons that are obvious to anyone that has ever tried to either study it or write about it. Paul Johnson has blended a good balance between presenting the complexities of 20th century history with the relatively simple cause and effect relationship between certain leaders, movements, and policies and their results on the peoples of the world.
The author has a moderate conservative bias, but he doesn't try to hide it like so many authors on both sides of the aisle. His research is thorough enough to force one to seriously consider his conclusions. All in all, this was a very enjoyable, interesting, and enlightening book and I would recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Revised History
Review: I've read this book a couple of times and even though I find some good points, there's just too much that is a half-truth at best and plain propaganda at worst. Paul Johnson wants to fight relativism, but he's the greatest relativist I can think of. According to him, British colonialism is "good" while French colonialism is "wrong". It never occurs to him that they both could be bad as far as the colonized natives are concerned. His justification of the 1919 Amritsar massacre of Indians by the British is idiotic and angered me. No "modern" man would (or should) dare to write something like that in today's "modern times". It seems to me that for the biggest part of it, the book is a well-written Anglo-Saxon Mein Kampf. Johnson wants us to belive that the British are master race, never wrong, only sometimes too kind. The Americans are well-meaning bumbles. And above all, the French to Johnson are unreliable cowards. He goes into foolish tangents to proove this. I was amused by the way he writes about the British subjects: If they're doing something right, they're "English". If not, they are "British", "Scots" or (reserved for the worst offenders) "Irish". If you want to read about the 20th century history, read other books, many other books. Don't let one furious, backward looking journalist tell you what to think.
Rating: 
Summary: The Definitive History of the 20th Century
Review: Paul Johnson's "Modern Times" is a masterpiece of History and Literature. As we move into the 21st century it is imperative that we understand the last century. No study of the last hundred years can be complete without reading this scholarly and well-documented survey of the bloodiest century man has known. More than an able historian Paul Johnson is a fabulous writer. His telling of fact reads like the best novels. This indispensable work is the definitive history of the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: Clarifying Major Events of the 20th Century
Review: Modern Time, a work of astounding breadth and clarity, identifies three seminal intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century-Marx, Freud, and Einstein-whose ideas directly and indirectly lead to communism, totalitarianism, and Nazism, three forms of government that rejected personal responsibility and the Judeo-Christian morality of the West. Marx said, according to Johnson, that society shaped people. Freud said our childhood shaped us. Finally, numerous intellectuals used Einstein's theory of relativity, much to Einstein's chagrin, to diminish the achievements of Western Civilization before the twentieth century and to advocate moral relativism as a new pseudo religion. Johnson then shows how this line of thinking lead to the death, enslavement, and impoverishment of billions of people across the world.
The book covers not just the superpowers but the explosion of the third world, with its copycat Hitlers, Stalins, and Maos. Most enlightening of all, the phalanx of intellectuals the wealth of the West made possible actually aided and abetted the corruption of the Soviet Union, Red China, fascist Germany, and all their dreadful imitators (for additional insight on terrible consequence of intellectuals, see Johnson's book, The Intellectuals). Worse, this scourge of our times has attacked every institution that lead the West to rule the world, from Christianity, to free enterprise, to democracy.
While Johnson finished the book more than a decade ago, his insights clarify the world today, from the chaos of the Middle East to never-ending butchery in Africa and juntas of the Western Hemisphere. Unlike far too many modern historians (who all too often merely illustrate Johnson's theme), Johnson makes bold and accurate declarations time and again and provides an avalanche of facts to make his case.
Rating:
Summary: Unconventional guide to the 20th century
Review: Paul Johnson is one of the more enjoyable historical authors writing today. I enjoy his work because he often chooses to focus on unusual aspects of events or looks at history in a way that it out of fashion with modern academia. Modern Times is an example to this style. Johnson discusses a history of the world from World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most subjects are covered only lightly, but everything has a common thread. That is, I believe, that relativist bureaucrats in control of strong nation-states has done considerable damage to people's ability to live in freedom and prosperity. The principal characters in Johnson's drama are conventional villians such as Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and Stalin, and the many lesser dictators. But the cases is made that individuals respected by academia - FDR, Nehru, Keynes - are also guilty of these crimes, just with lower body counts. This work was orginially written in the 1980s. It is nice that Johnson has been able to revise the book to include the Revolution of 1989, a new birth of freedom as he calls it. The new ending gives a happy ending to an otherwise depressing story.
Rating:
Summary: One of the critical parts of my political education
Review: I got ahold of the first edition of "Modern Times" when I was an undergraduate, and it was a literal revelation. Needless to say, I grabbed up the updated edition when I found it seven years later. I believe it holds up well to time's test today, though I wish that Mr. Johnson would update the book one more time to take account of the current war that the West is fighting against Islamist Jihadism. I believe, though, that Johnson is at his best - though this criticism is, to be sure, applicable to most historians - when he's writing about events far away enough in time that they can be looked at with a really objective eye. In other words, his analysis of the first half of the twentieth century shines with a light that is nearly blinding; his analysis of current, or near-current, events reads more like an op-ed in National Review. (Johnson is a conservative Catholic, which naturally affects his viewpoint). As some others have mentioned, one of the most questionable parts of the book is the segment in which he basically hand-waves away Watergate as presidential misdemeanor. Even us American conservatives have rather different memories of the event. He left me confused in the first edition, also, when he closed the book talking about conscience as an "epiphenomenon" of the evolved mind, which seemed to me to directly contradict everything he'd just spent hundreds of pages writing about. All the same, though, this is an epochal work, and I don't use the term lightly. If you're looking for a different view than what you got in your high school textbooks, run, do not walk, to the link above, and click on it to buy this book. You'll thank me for it. :)
|
