The Penguin History of the World

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF THE WORLD

J. M. Roberts was born in Bath and educated at Oxford. He was a Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, Oxford, from 1953 to 1979. From 1979 to 1985 he was Vice-Chancellor of Southampton University and from 1985 to 1994 Warden of Merton College. From 1967 to 1976 Roberts was joint editor of the English Historical Review. He is the author of Europe 1880–1945, The Mythology of the Secret Societies, The Paris Commune from the Right, The Age of Revolution and Improvement and The French Revolution. In 1985 BBC2 transmitted the thirteen-part historical series The Triumph of the West, which Roberts wrote and presented, and later in the year he published his book of the same title. He was historical adviser to the successful BBC television series People’s Century. Roberts was also the author of The Penguin History of Europe and The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century. He died in May 2003.

O. A. Westad was born in Norway and educated at the University of Oslo and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1990 to 1998 he was Director of Research at the Nobel Institute, and from 1998 Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War (2005), which won the Bancroft Prize, and Decisive Encounters (2003), a standard history of the Chinese civil war. He also served as general co-editor of The Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010) and as an editor of Cold War History. His new book is Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750.