★The new edition of a bestselling history of the Western Contemporary world from 1776 to today.

This book is not exactly a summary of the whole of world history, but rather a survey of those phenomena which, in the author’s opinion, point to the keys to the development of humanity from the end of the 18th century to the present day. In concise chapters, Juan Pablo Fusi describes contemporary global history: from civil wars to great conflagrations, the reader moves through the American and French Revolutions; the Industrial Revolution; the First World War; the Soviet Revolution; fascism; the Spanish Civil War; World War II; decolonization; the end of European dominance and the beginning of globalization after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Contemplating the great transformations that have taken place in economics, society, technology, science and culture across continents, Fusi’s panorama is key to understand the history of our time and the world in which we live today. The book includes maps, a timeline, and recommended reading.

Juan Pablo Fusi (San Sebastián, 1945) is currently Professor Emeritus at the Complutense University of Madrid. He studied in Oxford, with Raymond Carr, between 1976 and 1980, where he later became director of the Center for Iberian Studies at St. Antony’s College. He then was a professor at the universities of Cantabria, the Basque Country and Complutense. From 1986 to 1990, he was the director of the National Library (Madrid). He has been the academic director of the Ortega y Gasset University Institute and the Ortega y Gasset Foundation from 2001 to 2006. He has published, among other books, El País Vasco. Pluralismo y Nacionalidad (1983); Franco, Autoritarismo y poder personal (1985); España 1808-1996. El desafío de la modernidad (with Jordi Palafox); España. La evolución de la identidad nacional (1999); La patria lejana. El nacionalismo en el siglo xx (2003); Identidades proscritas. El no nacionalismo en sociedades nacionalistas (2006); El espejo del tiempo (2009) and Historia del mundo y del arte en Occidente (2014), both with Francisco Calvo Serraller; Historia mínima de España (2012); Breve historia del mundo contemporáneo (2013); El efecto Hitler (2015) and Breve historia del mundo. De la Edad Media hasta hoy (2016). He is a member of Jakiunde (Basque Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters) and, since 2015, of the Royal Academy of History.