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THE CENTURY by Peter Jennings

THE CENTURY

by Peter Jennings & Todd Brewster

Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-48327-9
Publisher: Doubleday

The companion volume to a 27-hour series to be broadcast in 1999 by ABC and the History Channel. Following on the heels of The American Century (p. 1278), this is the second of what will likely be a long wave of books attempting to review, memorialize, and explain the recent past. This version is distinguished by powerful photographs (ranging from a group of dispirited Native Americans on display at the 1904 World’s Fair to a shot of children playing amid the rubble of the devastated Bosnian city of Mostar), and by a number of first-person recollections of the century’s signal events, set apart from the text—and exhibiting considerable individuality and vigor. The narrative itself is swiftly paced, judicious, but not particularly reflective. Of its kind, then, this is a particularly handsome and visually provocative work, a useful overview, and a stimulating starting point for anyone anxious to review the past ten decades. The best available visual summary of the century. (125 color photographs, 410 b&w) (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)