By way of introduction -- Structures -- The white man's world -- Shapes of things to come -- European exceptionalism -- Europe as a system of power -- Challenges and challengers in the making -- The Great War and the beginning of the twentieth-century revolution -- A revolutionary peace -- Years of illusion -- An emerging global history -- The path to world war -- The Second World War -- Appearance and reality -- The Cold War unrolls -- East Asia reshaped -- Africa and the Near East: Old and new problems -- Changing minds -- New economic and social worlds -- Authority and its new challengers -- The Cold War at its height -- Vietnam and after -- The reshaping of Europe -- A world in evolution -- Crumbling certainties -- Post Cold War realities -- Fin-de-siecle -- Retrospect.