“Nietzsche rightly perceived,” Johnson continued, “that the most likely candidate would be the ‘Will to Power’ and it is precisely the Will to Power that, since…World War I, has made this such an unsettled and bloody century.” This remains a fundamentally true insight about the world today, forty years after the first publication of Johnson’s history, which has gone through several editions and translations. The Times commended its fundamental argument: the “history of modern times in great part the history of how the vacuum formed by the decline of religion has been filled.” It is one of the greatest works of history written since World War II, with a style and perceptiveness answerable to the complexity and tragedy of the events it narrates. His 1983 History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s (in the USA entitled Modern Times ) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review (December 4, 1983) as one of the dozen most outstanding books of the year. Distinguished English professional historians such as Jonathan Clark and John Vincent have not only praised his historical writing but suggested that professional resentment of his work came from both left-wing animus and jealousy at Johnson’s great popular success. T he prolific English historian and journalist Paul Johnson died two months ago and there was no dearth of substantial obituaries in the British and American media, for both of which he wrote frequently and influentially for sixty years.
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