(4) PAUL JOHNSON –

MODERN TIMES: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1980S (1983)

 

“A latter day Mencken, Johnson is witty, gritty, and compulsively readable”.

 

Probably the most divisive entry in my top ten, in part because Johnson is the sole entry without a background as an academic historian (possibly except Ellis for whom I’m unable to find any biographical detail) – except perhaps for undergraduate study.

 

Instead, Johnson was a journalist and popular historian – although it makes you sit up and pay attention when you read that as a journalist he interviewed some of the historical figures in this book, as for example he states in a footnote he did with Kerensky (obviously in the latter’s exile as former leader of the Provisional Government of Russia overthrown by the Bolsheviks).

 

In part that explains the divisive nature of this entry – but perhaps mostly it’s the strength of his opinions and the prose style with which he expressed them, both of which (as well as that divisive nature) were reflected in this book.

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Yes, yes – I know this book has been updated and reissued with various subtitles to reflect that (such as the one in my feature image) but I’m going with the original title.

 

It was the first book of history that I read from Johnson although afterwards I avidly read others by him as it was a huge influence on me in my youth. Not so much now as I’ve receded somewhat from him as I’ve perceived some of his more idiosyncratic opinions, albeit I still rank him highly enough for this entry.

 

For example, I can agree with his assessment of Eisenhower as the twentieth century’s most successful president (although he also ranks Reagan highly, perhaps even higher in the later editions) but not so much some of the other presidents he ranked highly (or badly). Sorry, I will never see Nixon as anything but crooked, even if he demonstrated a certain amoral competence.

 

From the above one may divine his opinions to be conservative, of a distinctly Catholic and anti-communist kind – interestingly enough as he originally was left-wing before his ideological reversal on the road to Damascus, a metaphor I think he would have particularly liked given his beliefs and name.

 

Whatever one may think of his opinions, the virtuosity of his prose style was undeniable – perhaps the best of any of my top ten entries, with a particular talent for turns of phrase and chapter titles, as illustrated by those for this book:

 

1 – A Relativistic World

2 – The First Despotic Utopias

3 – Waiting for Hitler

4 – Legitimacy in Decadence

5 – An Infernal Theocracy, a Celestial Chaos

6 – The Last Arcadia

7 – Degringolade

8 – The Devils

9 – The High Noon of Aggression

10 – The End of Old Europe

11 – The Watershed Year

12 – Superpower and Genocide

13 – Peace by Terror

14 – The Bandung Generation

15 – Caliban’s Kingdoms

16 – Experimenting with Half Mankind

17 – The European Lazarus

18 – America’s Suicide Attempt

19 – The Collectivist Seventies

20 – The Recovery of Freedom (in later editions – formerly Palimpsests of Freedom)

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)