Customer Reviews

Dirty Little Secrets of the Twentieth Century

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In many ways this is excellent history. Dunnigan writes quite readably; his analysis is succinct and includes the right amount of information; a great deal of ground is covered. While Dunnigan has mostly written about military history matters in the past, he proves here that he is a versatile historian well able to handle sociological and economic matters. I find most of his statements well defended.

The only problem seems merely semantic, but it will affect most potential buyers: the title 'Dirty Little Secrets' leads one to believe that there will be a lot of classified data, stuff people were keeping hidden on purpose, and other Great Revelations. The majority of the book does not contain that. What it contains is discussion of various social and economic events and how they shaped history throughout the century. There are few 'secrets', and few of those are really 'dirty'. In my opinion that's only worth a one-star markdown on what is otherwise quite a good history book.

The title of this book is misleading . . . it leads one to assume that the book contains a number of hidden and little known facts and figures that influenced the 20th century, when it reality it is just one man's oddyssey into the social and political forces and changes that occurred in the 20th century. No references to anything is given, so as history it is very weak. General trends are noted, most of which are obvious anyway, and some parallels with the past are noted. It is a nice, quick easy read and may turn up a few items that you weren't aware of before, but anyone familiar with current events or recent history will not be impressed. An example from the book: Why do Americans live longer than other peoples in third world countried? Answer: Better sanitation! A secret? You decide.

This book seems to be miscategorized. While well written technically, it lacks properly attribution for many assertions, and seems to be more of a series of editorials than actual researched subjects.

If the author decides to revise the book in the future, he should consider providing much more source background, and leave the conclusions up to the reader, rather than making those conclusions without first providing the facts to back them up.

1st off, there's nothing "dirty" about any of the "little secrets" in this book. However, the info provided is new to me, very interesting, and very well written. It's amazing that so much of this material it new to me, I've enjoyed this book a lot and I suspect that you will too.

I really liked this book because it didnt sound like my history teacher. I'm no historian, but the writer's explanations is somewhat similar to my grandparents and relative's never ending tale of the past.

I'd recommend this for the young people, like me, who would like to read about history--- its a way to start liking it.

I picked this up because I needed a little non-fiction fix. Liking Zinn's "A People's History", I thought I might glean something from this book. However, aside from a couple of factual errors and a lack of citation, I did keep on reading. I did so because the writing is clear and engaging.

Yet there is something lacking, and it is breadth to the subjects covered. This breezy read could be helpful to someone whose only experience with studying history is a middle-school class. Anyone else might just wonder why something like the Spanish Flu epidemic gets relegated to one paragraph.

I would recommend looking for another resource

Aside from the semantic problem that the previous reviewer noted, i.e., 'secrets' tend to be things that are kept from public knowledge, this book is simplistic and superficial to the extreme. The tone is one of middlebrow haughtiness (think Reader's Digest) and the information tends to be more of a gloss instead of the interesting anecdotes one would expect from the title.

This book seems to have been written to reassure the author's chosen audience that they already know everything important.

James Dunnigan's "Historical" novel drew me in because of the title. I assumed that I would be presented with historical facts that had been covered up or whitewashed by the powers that be. Instead I found the novel to be more of series of editorials in with very little legitimate historical fact. Mr. Donnegan presents sweeping generalizations, statistics and charts that are not validated, and conclusions that are drawn, not on the facts presented, but on personal bias. There is no bibliography that one can check or investigate his information. He often uses language that is insulting and leading. I found his book to be an insult to the intelligence of anyone who believes themselves to be a historian. The book stated that it "provides a unique look at the past one hundred years" and I agree with this statement. Dunnigan's "historical" look is unique in that it is far from a true historical work, and should not be placed under the category of history.

This book reaffirms me in thinking that to be informed isn't listening to news from radio or TV but an active process and for this the anterior means have a low value. If you want to be really informed and no plenty of dubitous rumours, you must read and perhaps look an screen but not a commercial one. This book is pleasant and I think informative and fiable in a ligth style. Of course it deals with so many themes which I can't say if the author is ever rigth. One at less is false: the average safety razor blade doesn't fits 20- 40 shavings at less you have to elect between this or a bayonet under machine gun fire. General point of view is from USA and in other countries the reader can disagree about some questions but in general is acceptable and at last America is the country of the XX century as Greeks were in 500 B.C. As it were I think human life and change of customs can't be measured by administrative periods, centuries, years, weeks... this only fits for book- keepers. Dunningan seems to be better informed about war and weapons and really he is not very optimistic about politics and peace. The author highligths the falseness of many concepts commonly believed by many people but he does these withouth resort to sophisticated philosophical concepts, a custom very own of Europe which frequently becomes a defect because in common life there's not so many time for abstract thinking but much things to do.