Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
“If you want to complete your education, I highly recommend Modern Times by Paul Johnson.”
Why it is worth your time
Modern Times is Paul Johnson's history of the 20th century, first published in 1983 and revised in 1991 to cover the end of the Cold War. Johnson was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning New Statesman in the 1960s and then moved right. His argument is that the century's disasters came from the collapse of moral absolutes and the rise of the state and its utopian ideologies, from Lenin and Hitler to postwar planners. The revised edition is favorable to Reagan and Thatcher. Sacks posted in Aug 2021 that anyone who wants to complete their education should read it. His history reading leans toward grand narrative, and this fits beside Churchill and Rome on his list. It suits readers who want a single conservative account of the century. The caveat is partisanship. Kirkus called it a partisan work presenting conservative prejudices as history, and it runs to more than 800 pages.
