從我們最偉大的曆史學傢之一，JM·羅伯茨，來瞭一個引人入勝的捲曆史非凡的世紀，我們剛剛經曆。羅伯茨標識超齣瞭傳統的按時間順序敘述事件，背後主要的長期變化，特彆指嚮全球預期壽命增加，主要在科學和技術的進步，徹底重構全球經濟帝國的消失白色霸權的衰落和女性角色的轉變。

J.M. Roberts's monumental Penguin History of the World became a publishing phenomenon and sold in the hundreds of thousands. Now he has produced an equally brilliant new book, focusing solely on our own troubled and dramatic century, and it has all the breathtaking sweep and confident judgment of his previous work. Most important, Roberts takes a truly international view of things. The 20th century, he argues, is marked as much as anything by the decline of Europe as the world's sole arbiter and the emergence of today's cosmopolitan, global civilization, born of decolonization, the resurgence of Islam, and the vibrant, self-assured new nations of Asia and Latin America. He also examines the other two major trends of our time: the social and economic empowerment of women and the extraordinary quadrupling of the world's population, most of it in Third World countries. A challenging and exacting read, Twentieth Century is destined to be a classic. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk