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.
一九四五年,世界现代史的开端。在这一年,正义联盟战胜了邪恶帝国,人类历史上最大一场浩劫终得以落幕。乐观、希望、自信、昂扬,这些情绪弥漫在胜利国的每一个角落,那些从战争中被拯救过来的人民,都以前所未有的热情,站在战后还未清扫的废墟上,凝望未来,希冀未来,并准...
评分写这段话的时候,本人刚刚看了28页。 我觉得《零年》这本书,填补了一个国内的视角空白。尤其是关注1949年新旧秩序交替岁月的那段历史,因为意识形态的原因,中国大陆封闭、保守的政策,导致我们的视角在很长时间内与政府的表述角度高度统一,无论是主动还是被迫,还是无意识...
评分巨大的震撼。一边观看着红场阅兵的直播,脑中却浮现起苏联士兵强奸德国妇女的情节,我几乎三观尽毁。在一个失序的社会中,人性里的各种成分都可能被激发,即使是站在正义旗帜下的一方,其行为也会与非正义方一样恶劣。 近年来,国内一些鹰派政治家、军事家备受推崇,每当有国际...
评分当代初级历史教育给学生留下了一个烙印——针对一个事件,必然有正义的一方和邪恶的一方;针对某一个问题,必然有最终的结果和答案。如果事件没有那么清晰,那就代入自己预设的方案;如果问题一时半会难以解释,那就“等反转”。这样做的目的和近年来很多《极简XX史》的出版有...
那年非婚生小孩是往年的3X,并且占领区女子都乐意被GI们XX。。。荷兰人就是荷兰人
评分历史有这种 narrative 才完整。
评分提供了战后世界的全景式图像,帮助我们摆脱各国努力建立的、过分简化的英雄主义grandiloquence;欢迎观赏45年的大型分蛋糕游戏(。
评分一边看,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。
评分14hrs28mins “...even though many of these would turn to ash, as everything eventually does.”
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