The 20th Century Year by Year [antikvár]

T ^ hrough the letter-box, outside the newsagent's, reading over someone's shoulder - the newspaper headlines grab your attention. And throughout the 20th century, every crisis and conflict, every craze and controversy has been chronicled in newsprint. It has been an extraordinary century of achievement, and of failure - a story of immense events, and also of individuals, of war and invention, royalty and revolution, space journeys and television. A century in which newspaper photographs pin down those moments when history is made. The 20th Century Year by Year presents a decade-by-decade account of the past hundred years: a parade of politicians and film stars, athletes and kings, flappers and beatniks, hippies and punks - and also the millions who have found themselves caught up in the making of history. For it has been a century in which all of us have been more aware than ever of what has gone on in our world. Improved communications have brought reports of distant events ever more quickly into the news. This chronicle shows those stories as they might appear on the front pages: through two world wars and the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire, to the trends, fashions and novelties that have entered our daily lives - pop music, instant coffee, nylon stockings and biro pens. The 20th century began in a mood of great optimism, with royalty on the thrones of Europe and excitement about scientific discoveries. But it has been a century of surprises and changing prospects. Even so, much of history repeats itself, and in the headlines of the last hundred years will be the seeds of many of the events of the next. I / A