The age of interconnection : a global history of the second half of the twentieth century / Jonathan Sperber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sperber, Jonathan, 1952- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History, Modern--20th century.

History, Modern.

History, Modern--1945-1989.

Twentieth century.

Physical Description:

viii, 793 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]

Summary:

"In this ambitious, groundbreaking, and sweeping work, Jonathan Sperber guides readers through six decades of global history, from the end of World War Two to the onset of the new millennium. As Sperber's immersive and propulsive book reveals, the defining quality of these decades involved the rising and unstoppable flow of people, goods, capital, and ideas across boundaries, continents, and oceans, creating prosperity in some parts of the world, destitution in others, increasing a sense of collective responsibility while also reinforcing nationalism and xenophobia. It was an age of transformation in every realm of human existence: from relations with nature to relations between and among nations, superpowers to emerging states; from the forms of production to the foundations of religious faith. These changes took place on an unprecedentedly global scale. The world both developed and contracted. Most of all, it became interconnected. To make sense of it, Sperber illuminates the central trends and crucial developments across a wide variety of topics, adopting a chronology that divides the era into three distinct periods: the postwar, from 1945 through 1966, which retained many elements of period of world wars; the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, when the pillars of the postwar world were undermined; and the two decades at the end of the millennium, when new structures were developed, structures that form the basis of today's world, even as the iconic World Trade Center was reduced by terrorism to rubble. The Age of Interconnection is a clear-eyed portrait of an age of blinding change." -- Publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction

Part 1: The material world

Nature

Disease

Technologies

Part 2: Interactions

Markets

Migrations

The Powers

Part 3: Varieties of the social

Societies

Labor

Leisure

Consumers

Part 4: Dreams and nightmares

Beliefs

Mass murder

Utopias

Aftermath

Conclusions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 737-753) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Sperber, Jonathan, 1952- Age of interconnection.

ISBN:

0190918950

9780190918958

OCLC:

1263022365