Surveys the 20th century, narrating political events while elaborating a case for structural forces – without a comprehensive framework. During the 1900s, the pace and scale of change accelerated. At the start of the century, religion was sufficient for categorizing humanity. By the conclusion, the expansion of personal wealth and ‘lifestyles’ driven by personal choice, women’s liberation, the rise of mass communications (including the Internet), and most important the belief that human happiness can be obtained on earth came to the fore. Windy social chapters at the start and end surround socioeconomic and political events grouped into pre-1914, interwar, and Cold War. Personnel changes rarely cause decisive shifts, according to the author. World War I and II combined to the end of European dominance, although its culture continued to resonate; the interwar era was less a triumph of fascism than a recession of democracy; the second world war saw the defeat of the ‘greatest challenge to liberalism’. Nationalism was the greatest political force of the century. In India and China, nationalist movements (loosely clothed in Western garb) were conscious of self-determination as a means to their own ends. However, Africa’s failures following Ghanaian independence in 1957 – 12 wars and 13 assassinations in 27 years – demonstrate fragile self-governance. Roberts routinely understates the tyranny of Soviet Russia and Maoist China, skipping past Ukrainian Holodomor or postwar repression in Eastern Europe (although acknowledging Soviet industrialization based on slave labor). The Cultural Revolution was as a ‘exercise in modernization’. The fall of the Soviet empire and the emergence of the European Union is also shortchanged; oddly, the UK is blamed for a late entry, but de Gaulle’s role is omitted. A new skepticism of science (i.e., the conquering of nature) arose in the 1970s and 80s. Roberts chronicles the rise and fall of Freudian psychoanalysis, but overlooks social relativism. In looking for deeper meaning in social trends, Roberts forgets history of democracy is the self-conscious choices of people. His shallow portrayal of tyranny leaves him unable to pick out liberalism’s high points and the true effects of statesmanship.