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, an...
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 “reeducation” 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 Buruma’s own father’s story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by war’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 “normalcy” stand in many ways for his generation’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
Ian Buruma is the Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. His previous books include The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism, God's Dust, Behind the Mask, The Wages of Guilt, Bad Elements, and Taming the Gods.
![[荷兰] 伊恩·布鲁玛](https://img9.doubanio.com/view/celebrity/m/public/pSG6tnVUlOQocel_avatar_uploaded1507260003.16.jpg)
伊恩·布鲁玛 作者
大眼狗
广西师范大学出版社2015版
Verve
广西师范大学出版社2015版
豆掰
北京日报出版社2019版
0 有用 (+_+) 2021-02-10 17:26:00
是历史课外的史料补充，又是一本是我觉得应该由高中历史或政治老师推荐给学生看的书。不过说深度也是没有的，只能说是把一般人大脑里大纲式的历史年表稍微丰富了一点细节，使纸面上刻板的人物多了一些色彩。于我个人而言，有益的部分在于了解胜利后的purge，尤其是针对女性的迫害，以及战后对轴心国的再教育问题，说到这，这书里简直就没提意大利，荷兰部分都比它多。 另就文本而言，易读，原文基本无困难。
0 有用 Sinan 2017-06-24 11:33:07
Total destruction means total reconstruction - hopeful, inspiring yet sad in a way, What I miss is the technology change in year zero.
0 有用 KRIS_24 2018-07-19 14:54:35
历史有这种 narrative 才完整。
0 有用 liujhblcu 2015-01-29 17:13:25
一边看，一边听Gildart Jackson的有声书，用了一周多的时间。全英文，理解起来难度不大。Ian Buruma具有世界眼光，作为一个小国的荷兰学者能做到这一点颇为不易。令人想起高罗佩。
0 有用 今ヶ瀬 2018-03-16 04:40:49
Audible 14hrs28mins “...even though many of these would turn to ash, as everything eventually does.”