Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51737 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 702 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Dark Valley" as a phrase was coined first by the Japanese to refer to the desperate years of chaotic depression that followed the 1929 slump. But, as Piers Brendon's epic history of the same name vividly demonstrates, it was apt to describe any of the world's leading nations--the crippled, traumatised European powers, a moody, solitary US, Stalin's outcast Russian Soviet and volatile, upstart Japan--of the time, with varying degrees of severity and fascinatingly contrasting outcomes. With no dishonour to those who endured the unspeakable traumas of the First World War, reading Brendon's scholarly tome leaves little scope to argue with the assertion, made by Leon Blum, amongst others, that the economic crisis and its effects were as traumatic as the "war to end all wars". Worse was to come, for sure, but the events that led to the "chasm" of the Second World War still boggle the mind--from our safe distance it is difficult to comprehend that this actually came to pass, yet at the same time the whole era seems to be engulfed by a fatalistic air of inevitability. In many ways, the insane dance of rampant ideological forces and economic desperation unleashed across the sphere make for the more gripping history, and in Brendon's hands the cast of thousands is skillfully evoked while the facts are judiciously evaluated in a rolling narrative through the tribulations of the era. This is first-class historical writing, but certainly not for the faint-hearted. --Alisdair Bowles

Synopsis
Piers Brendon's magisterial overview of the 1930s is the story of the dark dishonest decade, child of one world war and parent of the next, that determined the course of the twentieth century. Dealing individually with each of the period's great powers - the USA, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Japan, Spain and Russia - Brendon takes us through the ten years dominated by the Great Depression and political turmoil. When Broadway, Piccadilly Circus, the Kurfurstendamm and the Ginza - neon metaphors of hope after four years of carnage - grew dim as the giants of unemployment, hardship, strife and fear took their hold. From the concentration camps of Dachau and Kolyma, the Ukraine famine and the American Dust Bowl, to the Moscow metro, the Empire State Building and the Paris Exposition, The Dark Valley brings the 1930's back to life through meticuous scholarship. Brendon examines the great leaders - Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao Tse-Tung, Haile Selassie and countless others - not with hindsight but in the context of their age; but also, through a vivid chronicling of contemporary experience, he gives us a sense of what it was to be living then.

From the Publisher
A worldwide survey of the 1930s - popular history of breathtaking scho larship and scope.

Customer Reviews

A captivating account of the 1930s
The Dark Valley surveys 7 countries and their response to the Depression, and whilst the history may be familiar to many people, Brendon draws together an interesting and fresh narrative, knitting together many disparate strands.

Most histories tend to focus either upon international relations, or are country specific. By drawing the two together we are able to instantly see how one affected the other. The book does not just focus upon the machinations of the political elite: Brendon consistently attempts to take into account public opinion, and the effects of the Depression upon ordinary people is well detailed.

The approach he has adopted does really pay off. The chapters are linked together well, and the placing of the Spanish chapters together clearly reflects Brendon’s belief that it was the major international event and, perhaps, the one occasion when history could have taken a radically different stance. The appeasement towards Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, Italy’s campaign in Abbyssinia and Hitler’s march across Eastern Europe is well documented: the Spanish chapters therefore provide extra illumination upon international affairs in the 1930s.

The book is thoroughly researched, and there are many humorous anecdotes that often express the futility of the times. Like the work of Robert Service, the anecdotes do not cheapen the narrative, instead enhancing the book. One of the best features of the book are the character sketches, deployed to describe the main actors of the decade. Often witty, Brendon draws the characters evocatively, and adds significantly to the enjoyment of the book.

The one criticism of the book is that by attempting to hit so many targets the narrative can often become lost. Because the chapters on the countries are spread out, to create a chronological narrative, it is often difficult to remember who was whom when you next hit that country. This was perhaps most apparent in France and Japan where the governments frequently changed, and it was difficult to remember who was in power.

However, the book is a fantastic survey of the decade. Brendon has drawn together stories that would normally be separate, and knitted them together extremely well. The writing is energetic, and his analysis is scrupulously fair, though he is extremely damning to most of the political class in democracies. This book is a must-read for any student of 20th Century history.

History At Its Best
“The Dark Valley” is a spawling masterpiece of a book. Ah, if only Amazon reviewers got onto the cover of later editions, I’d be in with a shout with that hyperbolic line. But then they don’t need any more praise-brimming quotes for this book – there’s pages of them inside, and for good reason.

“The Dark Valley” is, despite its wide subject-area, covering Britain, Japan, America, Italy, Germany, France and Spain (during the Civil War at least), is incredibly in-depth. This is the work of a man who has spent literally years working on his magnum opus, as you can tell from there being never less than 100 quotations in each chapter, which Brendon blends adroitly into the main body of his text, giving everything a very authentic feel. With the immense research Brendon has obviously done, it’s far easier to place trust in his conclusions than perhaps one might other historians’.

Brendon deals with the numerous major events which led from the First World War to the Second, which inevitably centres around the Great Depression to a large degree. However, he manages to bring everything down to a very human level, mostly steering well clear of (for me) boring sets of figures and dates showing different countries’ economies during the years following 1929. As he states in his introduction, he deals with “vignettes” of key protagonists of the time; politicians, big business men, radical thinkers, military men etc, from France’s Popular Front under Leon Blum, to the out of control Japanese army in Manchuria/Manchukuo. Brendon conveys a real sense of who these people were, who shaped the landscape of the world as it is today, using anecdotes and extracts from diaries, speeches and newspaper reports, though obviously the latter two were more often than not propaganda. This is a theme well developed by Brendon, as he demonstrates just how much information (and thus whole nations) was controlled during this period; the Dark Valley of the title is increasingly significant in this sense, because most people had no idea what was happening around them, literally living “in the dark”.

This more personal touch of Brendon’s, telling the stories of individuals to show the reader what famous (and infamous) events and places were really like to live through, makes “The Dark Valley” quite similar to Antony Beevor’s acclaimed masterpiece, “Stalingrad”, which reviewers have already noted. I would suggests, though, that with its immense depth and much larger canvas, “The Dark Valley” is the superior of these books, if only from the selfish view of how much I was made interested in or even entertained by the events described within the respective books. Even if you would disagree with me on this, I think anyone reading Brendon’s work would have to agree that it could hardly have been done better: this really is history at its best.

The only minor problems I had with this book at all were the sheer length of it – ignore the page count, the font is so small and the pages so large, this could easily be as lengthy as “A People’s Tragedy” – although never uninteresting, it does make tackling this book a daunting task. The other small quibbles are the American Chapters – perhaps a matter of personal preference, but American history in the 1930s is actually pretty dull compared with what was happening in the rest of the world. These chapters, apart from the initial ones explaining the Wall Street Crash and Roosevelt’s New Deal, tend to follow the lines of “the President did this, people did not like this. Therefore the President did this – the people quite liked this”.

But as I say, this in no way prevents “The Dark Valley” being a true classic of historical study.

The 1930s - a most troubling decade
This is the best history of the 1930s I have read. It is very cleverly written by means of first-hand stories and anecdotes. The research required for this sort of book must have been phenomenal, and yet one is not overpowered by the volume. Not one page is boring, and I read every one ! The 1930s are usually dismissed as "the preamble to the Second World War" - but as this book shows, they were packed with enormously significant events all over the world. The decade was,in fact, a transition period when the ethics and habits of the last century were finally eliminated and a new global era began. This book will probably become the standard work on the period.