Year Zero: A History of 1945

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Year Zero: A History of 1945

A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War II

Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it.

In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, and the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, decolonization, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Social, cultural, and political â€œreeducationâ€ was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advised, but in hindsight, as Ian Buruma shows us, these efforts were in fact relatively enlightened, humane, and effective.

A poignant grace note throughout this history is Burumaâ€™s own fatherâ€™s story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by warâ€™s end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into â€œnormalcyâ€ stand in many ways for his generationâ€™s experience.

A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.

Country	USA
Author	Ian Buruma
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9781101638699
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Penguin Books
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
NumberOfPages	362
PublicationDate	2013-09-26
Publisher	Penguin Books
ReleaseDate	2013-09-26
Studio	Penguin Books

Year Zero: A History of 1945

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