The age of interconnection : a global history of the second half of the twentieth century

A panoramic view of global history from the end of World War Two to the dawn of the new millennium, and a portrait of an age of unprecedented transformation. 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.-- provided by amazon.com Cover The Age of Interconnection Copyright Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Maps Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1: The Material World 1 Nature 2 Disease 3 Technologies Part 2: Interactions 4 Markets 5 Migrations 6 The Powers Part 3: Varieties of the Social 7 Societies 8 Labor 9 Leisure 10 Consumers Part 4: Dreams and Nightmares 11 Beliefs 12 Mass Murder 13 Utopias Aftermath Conclusions Notes Select Bibliography Index A monumental and accessible global history of the second half of the twentieth century, from the end of World War Two to the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, offering readers the most complete portrait of the age available