{"product_id":"1946-the-making-of-the-modern-world-9781101870426","title":"1946: The Making of the Modern World","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the author of Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire comes a powerful  revelatory book about the year that would signal the beginning of the Cold War  the end of the British Empire  and the beginning of the rivalry between the United States and the USSR. Victor Sebestyen reveals the events of 1946 by chronologically framing what was taking place in Europe  the Middle East  and Asia  with seminal decisions made by heads of state that would profoundly change the old order forever. Whether it was the July 22 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem  the July 25 Bikini Atoll underwater atomic bomb test  or the August 16 Great Calcutta Killings in India  1946 was a year of seismic and dramatic events.  Sebestyen begins with the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference the week before Christmas 1945  when Stalin announced that the USSR would not withdraw its troops from Iran by March 1946  and ends with the morning of November 3  1946  when Emperor Hirohito officially unveiled Japans new constitution before the National Diet. The year 1946 would see the map of Eastern Europe redrawn  Chinese communists gaining decisive victories in their fight for power  and the birth of Israel.  Though Truman  Stalin  Churchill  MacArthur  Ben-Gurion  Hirohito  and Menachem Begin are part of the story  Sebestyen also writes about the enormous suffering and ongoing persecution of civilians in the aftermath of the war: the pillaging and rape; the ethnic cleansing of the German population from Czechoslovakia and Poland; the rise of a violent new anti-Semitism; the civil wars in China and Greece; the mass starvation in Japan  Eastern Europe  and Germany on a scale not seen since the Middle Ages; the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and diphtheria; and such total desolation that schools  government  and transportation were nonexistent and currency was worthless.  Drawing on personal testimonies and new archival research  Sebestyen has written a vivid and compelling narrative that brilliantly evokes the beginning of the Cold War set against a devastated landscape of dystopian horrors.  (With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647015968821,"sku":"ByrdShop_1101870427","price":21.2,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781101870426.jpg?v=1781685667","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/1946-the-making-of-the-modern-world-9781101870426","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}