Midcentury Journey Author:William L. Shirer WM, reporter, novelist and social historian, reappraises the European scene and gives us a modern European diary....The book is based primarily on his journey to the Old World when the century was half over. Once there, the author found himself constantly considering what had happened to Western Europe in the qtr century since his firs experien... more »ces there as an American war correspondent. As he journeys from capital to capital, from Vienna to Paris to Frankfurt to Berlin to London, he begins, in his mind, a journey back in time, trying as best he can to bridge the gulf between Now (1952) and Then, between two worlds separated by almost incredible social convulsions. The brief period between 1914 and the present (1952) has been a time of unparalleled violence, revolution, bloodshed, tyranny and strife. The historians have called it an Age of Conflict. A man of the Right or Center can agree with Leon Trotsky, an uncompromising man of the Left, when he said: "Anyone desiring a quiet life has done badly to be born in the 20th Century. A Midcentury Journey is a journey in Space and time through Western Europe and the US. At the journey's end, the reader has a trained observer's first hand view of th where we are and how we got there; and some pointers on how to make the second half of the century a more peaceful era.« less