Product Description

The Birth of the Modern has established itself as a new kind of historical work - an examination of the way the matrix of the modern world was formed. Paul Johnson, one of today's most popular historians, takes fifteen critical years and subjects them to a fascinatingly detailed analysis: their geopolitics and politics, their cultural and intellectual life, their technology and science. He investigates every area of life, in every corner of the world. And he makes of this huge variety of elements a coherent narrative, told through the lives and actual words of the age's people - outstanding and ordinary - so that the reader feels he was there.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #848464 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1120 pages

From the Publisher
“A work of this kind stands or falls…on the richness of its material, the scope of its coverage, the intelligence of its arguments, and on all these counts this book not merely stands, but towers above any other history of the period” Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Paul Johnson was born in 1928 and educated at Stonyhurst and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has enjoyed a varied career, which includes army service and international journalism. He has contributed to many of the world's most famous newspapers and magazines and has travelled to all five continents to report events, interview presidents and prime ministers for the press and TV, and to lecture to academic and business audiences.

Customer Reviews

very helpful introduction to an important period
This book is intended to be a brief (1000 pages) introduction to world history roughly between 1815 and 1830. It is very much a case of covering lots of areas in not very much detail, but he does mesh them together well and give a sense of something approaching what it must have been like to look back on those times. There is an emphasis on the situations in Britain and America, but given the facts that Paul Johnson is English and writing in English, not to mention the impact of those countries on the next century, I think it's fair.

I read the book because I wanted to understand more of why the world is the way it is, and the history I'd done at school either finished at about 1750, or started at World War 1.

All in all, I found this book really helpful.