Year Zero

A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War II Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new,uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including ChinaKoreaIndochinaand the Philippinesand of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it. In human termsthe scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruinstheir populations decimateddisplacedstarving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scaleand the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same timein the wake of unspeakable lossthe euphoria of the liberated was extraordinaryand the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare statethe United NationsdecolonizationJapanese pacifismand the European Union. Socialculturaland political ΓÇ£reeducationΓÇ¥ was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advisedbut in hindsightas Ian Buruma shows usthese efforts were in fact relatively enlightenedhumaneand effective. A poignant grace note throughout this history is BurumaΓÇÖs own fatherΓÇÖs story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Hollandhe spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborerand by warΓÇÖs end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened cityhaving barely managed to survive starvation rationsAllied bombingand Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into ΓÇ£normalcyΓÇ¥ stand in many ways for his generationΓÇÖs experience. A work of enormous range and stirring human dramaconjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluencyYear Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.