TURBULENT YEARS
Handlin, Oscar
urbulent Years A WORLD HISTORY OF OUR TIMES. Volume One: From the Turn of the Century to the 1918 Armistice, by Quincy Howe. Simon and Schuster. 695 pp. 300 illustrations. $5. Reviewed by Oscar...
...Although the title of the book reads "World History," we get little but the linked histories of separate countries...
...For that we owe a small measure of gratitude...
...Occasionally a paragraph on science intrudes, an invention is mentioned, or a work of art...
...In the sections on the United States, there is even room for a stray human interest story in which common people appear, although these do not seem to exist in any other part of the globe...
...So, "Germany owed its outstanding position in Europe largely to one man, Otto von Bismarck," and the diplomacy of the years before the war is the Czar and the Kaiser, Delcasse and Grey writing letters to one another...
...Howe's intention was to write a "journalistic history" of our times...
...Howe's strength and shortcomings as a historian...
...This Mr...
...A chapter on Austria follows one on Germany and is followed by another on Russia while interstitial discussions deal with the diplomatic relations of the various powers...
...To put it bluntly, Mr...
...In analysis and treatment, the book reflects the headlines of yesterday, often arouses nostalgic reminiscences, more often surprise at what once teemed important...
...Howe has nothing to say and devotes well over 600 pages to the task...
...Howe's emphasis is entirely upon politics, particularly upon international affairs...
...And indeed, moving through these pages the reader has the impression of leafing through the file of an old newspaper...
...If there were any world trends in this period, their influence is not here made apparent...
...But that gratitude will be somewhat tempered with disappointment, for the work is as free of fresh ideas as it is of mistakes...
...From time to time, words of another order do float into the narrative —industrialism, nationalism, liberalism, imperialism...
...But in a non-journalistic, historical sense, these words stand for trends of immense importance...
...In any case, the non-political matters are simply parenthetical, not meaningfully connected with the main part of the story, which is that of diplomacy...
...They are the past from which the present grew...
...Its author seems to have taken pains in verifying facts...
...As a result, his work fails to add much more to our understanding than would a series of loosely collected clippings...
...Too bad Mr...
...But if history has any virtue at all, it is the virtue of being not journalistic, of standing off from contemporary impressions, of endowing the events of the past with perspective and continuity, of establishing their relationships...
...Howe cannot do...
...Furthermore, the weight of Mr...
...These terms are referred to as in a contemporary news story where the reporter takes for granted that his readers have a complete comprehension of their meaning...
...Finally, the whole is written as if a limited number of great personalities dominated history and as if the most crucial developments hinged upon quirks of character...
...Howe never found the time or interest to deal with them...
...The names, the dates, the order of events are set down without striking errors...
...Covering the turbulent years from the opening of the 20th Century to the end of World War I, this installment gives us an adequate sample of Mr...
...The virtues of the book can, alas, be briefly stated: it is accurate in matters of detail...
...Reviewed by Oscar Handlin THIS IS the first of three volumes in which Quincy Howe proposes to give us a history of our century to its half-way mark...
Vol. 14 • March 1950 • No. 3
