Twentienth Century History For Dummies -- About the Author -- Author's Acknowledgements -- Contents at a Glance -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- About This Book -- Conventions Used in This Book -- Foolish Assumptions -- How This Book Is Organised -- Icons Used in This Book -- Part I: The Great War Years: 1900-19 -- Chapter 1: Overview of a Century -- When (and How Long?) Was the Twentieth Century? -- Characterising the Twentieth-Century World -- Ch-ch-ch-changes! -- The More Things Change, the More They Are (Basically) the Same -- Chapter 2: Fin de Siècle - Wrapping Up the Nineteenth Century -- Europe: A Dangerously Unstable Continent -- America: A Waking Giant -- Central and South America -- Radical New Ideas -- The Brave New World of Science and Technology -- Chapter 3: The Great War: 1914-18 -- A Powder Keg: Events Leading to the Great War -- Apocalypse Now: The War Starts (1914) -- All Not So Quiet on the Eastern and Western Fronts -- World Wide War -- Who Rules the Waves? -- Isolationist America -- The Times They Are A-Changing -- All Out on the Western Front: War's End -- Part II: The Years of the Great Dictators: 1919-45 -- Chapter 4: The Red Flag - Communism -- Workers of the World, Unite! Socialist Ideas -- The Russian Revolutions -- The Great Experiment - Lenin's Russia -- Stalin's Soviet Union -- Worldwide Reds -- Chapter 5: Men in Black (Shirts): The Right-Wing Dictators -- At-a-boy, Atatürk! -- Persia and Reza Khan -- Mussolini Muscles In -- Hitler's Germany -- Jackboots in South America -- Big in Japan -- Chapter 6: The Twenties: The Decade that Roared -- Lest We Forget: Dancing in the Shadow of the Great War -- Your Mother Wouldn't Like It: Sex, Lies, and Reel to Reel Film -- The Noble Experiment: Prohibition -- So You Thought Slavery Had Been Abolished, Did You? -- You Need Wheels -- Money, Money, Money.

Chapter 7: I'm the King of the World! Europe's Empires -- The White Man's World -- The Natives Are Restless -- Chapter 8: Depression and Aggression -- The World Stops Working -- We're on the Road to Warfare -- Chapter 9: The War of the World -- A New Strategy: Blitzkrieg -- Whirlwind War -- You Are Free to Do Whatever We Tell You: Occupation -- War Around the World -- Turning the Tables -- End of Round One. Stand by for Round Two -- Part III: The Divided World: 1945-89 -- Chapter 10: You're Cold as Ice! The Cold War -- Things Can Only Get Better! (Can't They?) -- When Two Tribes Go to War: A Bit of Background -- See? I've Got Friends! Cold War Alliances -- The Cold War Goes Global -- New Leaders - No Change -- Ending the Cold War -- Chapter 11: Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me: The End of Empires -- Sunset for the British Empire -- Taking French Leave -- Suez - Two Empires Humiliated -- Chapter 12: Africa's Wind of Change -- Be Off, and Never Darken My Continent Again! -- Free at Last! Well, Sort Of . . . -- Chapter 13: Going Bananas: Latin America -- Latin America and Its Colonial Past -- Throwing Off the Foreigners -- Good Neighbour is Watching You: US Influence in Latin America -- Life in Latin America: The Middle Years -- The Cold War Years and Beyond -- Chapter 14: Asian Tigers -- A Quick Rundown of Key Events in Asia -- Japan - the Rise of the Rising Sun -- Korea - One Country, Two States -- Apocalypse Now - Vietnam -- India and Pakistan: After the Raj -- South East Asia -- The Wizards of Oz and the Orcs of New Zealand -- Chapter 15: Disneyland: Post-War America -- Land of Dreams - Fifties America -- Crazy Time - The Sixties -- America in the Seventies -- The Eighties, Reagan, and the End of the Cold War -- Chapter 16: Red on Red: Russia and China -- Comrades? (Maybe) -- Cultural Revolution in China -- Meanwhile, Back in the USSR . . .

Part IV: To the Millennium -- Chapter 17: Muddle in the Middle East -- When Israel was in Egypt's Land -- Palestine: Two into One Won't Go -- The Killing Grounds of Lebanon -- Islam - the New World Revolution -- Ba'ath Ba'ath - Black Sheep -- Chapter 18: Europe Rides Again -- Sunrise in the West -- Eastern Promises, Promises -- All Change! All Change! -- Chapter 19: New Order: Wrapping up the Twentieth Century -- After the Wall Is Over -- New Nations, New Dangers -- The Road to 9/11 -- Chapter 20: And the Living Is Easy - For Some -- Techno Beat -- The Times They Are A-Changin' -- To the New Millennium -- Part V: The Part of Tens -- Chapter 21: Ten Iconic Images -- The Titanic Goes Down, 1912 -- Your Country Needs YOU! -- The Empire State Building -- Auschwitz -- The Mushroom Cloud -- Marilyn Monroe -- The Vietnam Girl -- Che Guevara -- Neil Armstrong Walks on the Moon -- Tianenmen Square -- Chapter 22: Ten Triumphs of Technology -- The Refrigerator -- Television -- Cats' Eyes -- The Helicopter -- The Ballpoint Pen -- Satellites -- Heart Transplants -- Personal Computers -- Mobile Phones -- Barcodes -- Chapter 23: Ten Films That Made an Impact -- Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915) -- Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) -- All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930) -- Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) -- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) -- Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) -- Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) -- Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) -- The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) -- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) -- Chapter 24: Ten International Bodies that Made a Difference -- The International Committee of the Red Cross -- Scouting -- The League of Nations -- The United Nations -- The European Union -- The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) -- Amnesty International.

Oxfam -- Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) -- Greenpeace -- Chapter 25: Ten BAD Ideas -- Prohibition -- Totalitarian Dictatorship -- Racial Segregation -- The Domino Theory -- Concrete Tower Blocks -- Chewing Gum -- Plastic Wrapping -- Esperanto -- Sequels -- Flares for Men -- Index.