A Message from the publisher Historically, the turn of the century has been a time for reflection on the past, speculation toward the future, and assessment of the present. The most common and most obvious manifestation of these tendencies to excess is compulsive list-making. I do not wish to compromise the dignity of this page or the patience of the reader by adding fuel to the listing frenzy. List-making is often crucial to the historian's task of quantifying, synopsizing, and contextualizing the significant events, people, and trends that shape history. Yet lists are limited in that they touch only on the high spots of the historical topography, ignoring the rolling hills and valleys of context that give rise to historical phenomena.
Lists are useful tools, but they only go so far.
School children centuries from now may know about the world wars, but that knowledge will be of little use to them if they do not know how the fighting began, and have never run their mind's hand over the scars that it left behind. Yet time often outwits history by diminishing even the most significant of phenomena, and despite the better efforts of historians, links between cause and effect often rust and fall away with neglect. Therefore, I submit to you a brief list of twentieth-century events whose causes and effects need not be forgotten. The events are listed in chronlological order, and I have made no effort to rank them. Future generations of Americans must understand how close the world came to being plunged into darkness in the early 1940s, and how their forebears contributed to preventing that from happening.