The story of the middle years of the Twentieth Century, starting with the rise of dictatorial and military regimes in Europe and Asia, spanning the Second World War, and culminating in the establishment of the Iron Curtain and the East-West divide. It examines, among other conflicts, the Japanese invasion of China, the Spanish Civil War, the long civil struggles in China, the use of the atom bomb, the start of the Cold War, the Berlin Blockade, and the Korean War. Science and medicine, civic advances, the final era of the Western Empires, apartheid in South Africa, and life under Communism, all have their place in the detailed panorama of those years.
The story of the middle years of the Twentieth Century, starting with the rise of dictatorial and military regimes in Europe and Asia, spanning the Second World War, and culminating in the establishment of the Iron Curtain and the East-West divide. It examines, among other conflicts, the Japanese invasion of China, the Spanish Civil War, the long civil struggles in China, the use of the atom bomb, the start of the Cold War, the Berlin Blockade, and the Korean War. Science and medicine, civic advances, the final era of the Western Empires, apartheid in South Africa, and life under Communism, all have their place in the detailed panorama of those years.