Book Review: Modern Times

Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties by Paul Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While working at a public high school in New Jersey I observed a rather interesting pedagogical practice. It looked a little something like this: a band of students acting as undercover ambassadors of their history class would approach an unsuspecting non-history teacher with a historical or geographical trivia question. If the stunned teacher could not, say, identify a particular world destination on a blank map, or name a particular African dictator responsible for such and such event, the students would then report this failure back to their history class, sneering all the way at the ignorance of that unfortunate teacher, who was then labeled by the history class as being representative of a larger pattern of ignorance within our culture.

I'm not here to debate the merits of this type of assignment (although, someone should point out to the annoyingly arrogant students that the only reason why they know the answer is because their history teacher just talked about it last period...). I simply wish to share that the knowledge that, at any time, these students could be on the prowl struck a chord of fear in my heart. Commanding proper attention and authority as a young, female teacher is hard enough as it is; the last thing I need is to not be able to point out the Republic of Djibouti on a blank map in front of my entire class.

I've always been a bit insecure about my flimsy knowledge of historical and world happenings. The last time I took a proper world history class, I was a sophomore in high school. And, it was taught by the high school football coach, whose favorite technique was to distribute pastel colored worksheets, which we were then told to complete on our own. Needless to say, not a whole lot stuck. I can't blame all my ignorance on Coach Small, though. If I had spent my college summer vacations reading about history instead of playing countless hours of Tropico, I would be a much better person today.

Reading Modern Times by Paul Johnson constituted an attempt to better my historically-challenged self. This is not a people’s history, nor does it focus in depth on any one particular person or event. Rather, it's the story of the 20th's century's world leaders, the various ideologies they represented and the bloodshed that resulted when utopian visions inevitably imploded. Johnson seems to be particularly fascinated by the 20th century's unique propensity for producing charismatic revolutionaries, visionaries and messiahs whose often whimsical and ill-conceived decisions tragically influenced the lives of millions of people. The law of unintended consequences is a key theme in this book.

One characteristic of Modern Times that I appreciated is that Johnson doesn’t claim he’s done the impossible task of presenting the cold facts of history in an objective manner, completely free from bias. Rather, he unabashedly analyzes history, massaging the landscape of the 20th century into a narrative arc, replete with characters, themes and tragedies. His basic premise, which drives his analysis, is that Nietzsche’s prediction for the 20th came true, that at the dawn of modern times “the belief in the Christian God [was] no longer be tenable.” The vacuum left behind by God’s absence inevitably needed to be filled. Johnson goes on to argue, “Nietzsche rightly perceived that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power,' which offered a more comprehensive and in the end more plausible explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud. In place of religious belief there would be secular ideology. Those who had once filled the ranks of the totalitarian clergy would become totalitarian politicians. And, above all, the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatever, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind. The end of the old order, with an unguided world adrift in a relativistic universe, was a summons to such gangster statesmen to emerge. They were not slow to make their appearance” (48).

The fact that a traditional Judeo-Christian worldview undergirds Johnson’s argument might not sit well with some readers who disagree with his presuppositions (namely, that a moral fabric is woven into the universe and that man, despite his best efforts and often good intentions, is inherently weak and easily corruptible, which is why attempts at social engineering are doomed to fail). But to those who are open to Johnson’s particular angle, Modern Times will prove to be an informative and enlightening read. If I had to take a multiple choice test on it right now, I would likely score no better than a 9%, and I probably still can’t find the Republic of Djibouti on a map. So, you might be wondering why I devoted four months of my life to reading this long, boring book. What I can say is that the impoverished picture of the 20th century that I had in my mind prior reading this book has now been edified and enriched, and most importantly, it gave me a solid foundation onto which I will hopefully build.




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