GILBERT, MARTIN - A History of the Twentieth Century. Volume Three: 1952-1999

New York, William Morrow and Company, 1999. First U.S. Edition. Tall 8vo. xiv, 1072 pp. 52 bl./w. illustrations, 36 maps, hardcover with dust jacket. Isbn 9780688100667. Bibliography. Index. Volume II ended in 1951, as the world recovered from World War II, and the nuclear threat increased. In this volume, Gilbert recalls the Cold War and communism--including McCarthyism, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact, the Berlin Wall--and the wars, from Korea to Vietnam to Bosnia. He moves from Poland's Solidarity Movement to Ireland's Bloody Sunday, from Pol Pot and his killing fields to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Mao began a cultural revolution, Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy were assassinated, and Beijing's Tiananamen Square shocked the world. Technology and medicine advanced in leaps and bounds as the society struggled to catch up. Art, literature, and music, as well as epidemics and natural disasters, all have their place here. Good copy.