Cover Image: 1920: A Year of Global Turmoil

1920: A Year of Global Turmoil

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Member Reviews

Remarkable overview of the year 1920 and global political events. Seeing the sheer volume of events that the world made it through in 1920 gives me a bit of hope for 2020....and I'm just going to ignore how much of the events of 1920 led right into WWII.

The book takes a bit to get started as it has to give a lot of the prior to 1920 politics but once it gets going it does a very nice job of taking you through US, Europe, Mid-East and Russian activities throughout the year in an orderly fashion that somewhat ties them into the broader framework. It's a way better inter-relation than any textbook I've read has done.

I received an advance copy of this from Netgalley and this publisher in exchange for a fair review.

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In this monograph, David Charlwood essays to provide a global history of events in 1920 that would have lasting impact on global politics for years to come. To this end, the author provides detailed coverage of the crises that rocked the British empire, as well as those conflicts in which the United State was embroiled. Given that at this time the British empire encompassed 23 percent of the world's population and covered 13,700,000 sq. miles and that the United States was the emerging new superpower, the author's decision to tell the story of 1920 from an Anglo-American perspective certainly can be justified. However, the author's exclusive reliance on primary and secondary sources available in English is problematic, as it denies the reader access to a multiplicity of views of these world events and thus, recreates the Eurocentrism that the reemerging field of global history seeks to move beyond.

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