THE SHAPING OF THE MODERN WORLD

The Director of Extramural Studies of the University of Sheffield presents, in this massive volume, an intensive and highly readable survey of modern European and world history from 1870 to 1914, beginning with the unification of Germany under Bismarck, which point of departure he chooses because ""the rapidity of Germany's rise in 1870...radically altered not only the balance of power in Europe but almost every notion as to how power was to be exercised"". He covers also, developments in the Orient, South Africa, in the U.S. from the Civil War to the World War, but omits the Balkans, the Near and Middle East, Spain, Portugal and Latin America. Written from the viewpoint that history is a story, admittedly a tremendously complex one, this attempt is directed, not toward the serious student of history, but to those who wish to understand the events of significant consequence happening around them.