An Illustrated History of the Modern World / Иллюстрированная история современного мира.

If we imagine archaeologists attempting to reconstruct the history of the human race several thousand years from now, what conclusions will they reach? Like us, they will surely spot certain periods or events of special significance - like the invention of farming, or the Arab conquests of the 7th century AD. It seems likely that they will see the 200 years from about the end if the 18th to the end of the 20th century as the most significant so far. That period begins with two revolutions - the Franch Revolution which was to transform relations between people and governments, and the Industrial Revolution, which was to transform almost every other aspect of peoples lives. These great and ever-accelerating changes took place in the West, but they spread to other parts of the world too, so that within 200 years few people were unaffected by them. We have now reached a point at which, many people believe, the enormous material advance that began with the Industrial Revolution has outstripped the capacity of the Earth to sustain it. Perhaps the era of rapid economic progress is coming to an end. That era, an astonishing, eventful, heroic - and disastous - age, is the subject of this book. An Illustrated History of the Modern World is a staighyforward, highly readable account of the important developments of the world - Asia and Africa no less than Europe and the Americas - in the past 200 years. It is written by a team which includes some of the most eminent historians of our times. It aims to entertain as well as inform and enlighten, and includes over 600 specially chosen illustrations which help to capture the flavor of events.

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