Year Zero: A History of 1945 (Library Edition)

Product Description <br/>[Library Edition Audiobook CD in sturdy Vinyl case.]<br/><br/> [Read by Gildart Jackson]<br/><br/><br/>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 across Asia and all of continental Europe. It was the greatest global power vacuum in history, and out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it.<br/><br/> 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 darkness to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, American democracy, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Society-wide reeducation was imposed on the vanquished on a scale that had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill-advised, but in hindsight these efforts were relatively enlightened, humane, and effective.<br/><br/> A poignant grace note throughout his 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 slave 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.<br/><br/> A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency,<br/>Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write.<br/> Review <br/>''[An] insightful meditation on the world's emergence from the wreckage of World War II. Buruma offers a vivid portrayal of the first steps toward normalcy in human affairs amid the ruins of Europe and Asia . . . Authoritative, illuminating.'' --<br/>Kirkus Reviews<br/><br/>''A brilliant recreation of that decisive year of victory and defeat, chaos and humiliation, concentrating on peoples, not states. Gripping, poignant and unsparing,<br/>Year Zero is worthy of its author in being at home in both Europe and Asia. It is a book at once deeply empathetic and utterly fair, marked by wisdom and great knowledge; the often personal tone inspired by the fate of his father, a Dutchman forced into German labor camps. In the face of so much horror, it is an astounding effort at deep comprehension. A superb book, splendidly written.'' --Fritz Stern<br/><br/> ''<br/>Year Zero is the founding moment of the modern era. Ian Buruma's history of that moment is vivid, compassionate and compelling. Buruma weaves together a tapestry of vital themes: the exultation and sexual liberation that came with victory, the vindictive settling of scores that came with defeat and the longing for a world of peace, justice and human rights after the horror of total war. His story takes in the world: from Holland to Japan, and his heroes and heroines are the ordinary men and women who picked up the pieces of a broken world and put it back together for their children and grandchildren. We are their heirs and Buruma does our parents and grandparents justice in this magnificent history.'' --Michael Ignatieff<br/><br/>''A graphic account well-researched, splendidly constructed and stylishly written -- of the hinge year of the twentieth century, of its horrors, hopes, illusions and roots of troubles to come. Altogether compelling -- a fine achievement.'' --Sir Ian Kershaw<br/><br/> ''Ian Buruma gives a heart-wrenching account of the horrors, the unimaginable cruelties, and the sheer stupidities of the last months of World War II, and the attempts to deal with them in the first months of peace. Even after nea