Piers BrendonThe Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

The author’s mastery of the material is amazing considering the number of countries and years he covers. I read a lot of history books and the writing has narrative verve lacking in much historical writing. This is a great book!

Piers Brendon deserves praise for writing a mostly readable history of the 1930s that covers the major players in World War Two. The focus is decidedly on Europe with Italy, Germany, France and the UK getting detailed coverage, the United States, Japan, the USSR and Spain fill out the rest.The book is written in an episodic format with each chapter covering a period of time in one country. On occasion this means that one event is covered multiple times in separate chapters - not necessarily a bad thing when it allows a different perspective on the event. It also means that the narrative weaves back and forth through time: the chapter on France might end in 1936 but the next step in Italy starts in 1931. The effect of both is to make each chapter stand on its own but keeps the whole from quite fitting seamlessly together. Though Brendon does try to knit the chapters together by introducing the country covered in the next chapter in the last pages of the previous this tactic feels clunky more often than not. This is not a showstopper, just something to keep in mind.The chapters on Japan and Italy are especially strong, possibly because so few writers of popular history have given much attention to either country's experience during the 1930s lately. The chapters on Spain and France are quite good also. Oddly, considering that Brendon is English, the chapters on the UK are surprisingly patchy. The chapters on the United States are, on occasion, a bit odd. Brendon's take on the Supreme Court was surprisingly ill-informed and his sudden segue into Hollywood was downright bizarre. After paying little attention to culture in general Brendon spends pages essentially complaining about the output of the movie factories. I'm still wondering what the line "Even monsters like Boris Karloff and Shirley Temple did not seem credible" is supposed to mean. Does he mean the characters they played? Boris and Shirley as individuals? Is this a bon mot gone flat? Even more strangely, Brendon keeps referencing Citizen Kane, a great movie but one made in 1940 and released in 1941. Pop culture critiques are not Brendon's strength.The subtitle, A Panorama of the 1930s, is apt. This is not a comprehensive history. What Brendon covers and ignores verges on idiosyncratic at times. He's not trying for completeness but rather to give the reader the feeling of the 1930s: a slow, exorable descent into chaos and ultimately the dark valley of war. The sheer breadth of what the book attempts to cover deserves the attention of any reader interested in the times.

The softcover version of "The Dark Valley" has 692 pages of text. That sounds like a lot, unless as one reads them, as I did, he finds himself repeatedly asking, "Why does this book have to end?"Fairly early on, Author Brendon observes, "Cutting up the past and labeling the snippets is one way of trying to impose order on the flux of history. Doubtless it is always unsatisfactory - ages merge, epithets mislead." Of course, he then proceeds to demonstrate that while his assessment might be true for most historians, it certainly is not for him. Think of the `snippets' as fine but unformed threads and of Brendon as a master weaver; the result is a tapestry that takes a reader's breath away. Simply superb.The presence of so many thoughtful and incisive reviews requires that I add my own two cents in the form of a cavil: both Brendon here and Timothy Snyder in "Bloodlands" refer to the Russian pistol which was used to such stunning effect in ridding Stalin of his enemies as the "Nagan." It is, rather, the "Nagant," ending with a `t.' Big deal, eh? At least it shows I'm a careful reader (and, not surprisingly, that neither the Cambridge nor Yale libraries stock copies of "Firearms of the World").I am both a careful, and an unfulfilled, reader. Brendon can't do much about it now; his work is done. But I sure would have enjoyed another couple hundred pages of this marvelous piece of History writing. I have read so many books that I thought were wonderful that I'm always hesitant to call this or that `one of the best.' I have no such hesitation here: at or near the very top of the list. If you haven't read it, give yourself a treat. Just be warned about `wanting more.'

This is an unusual book. It does not claim to say a lot new yet is full of original insight. It seems to be about personalities yet successfully impacts major themes such as fascism, communism, the New Deal and the Depression across three continents. Brendon has a particular skill in cutting 'great men' down to size. We learn, for example, that Mosley's diatribes printed in his newspaper Action were juxtaposed with unrelated articles such as, "Will eels show us where lost continents lay?" Pierre Laval, on an official visit to Berlin in 1931, slipped out for frankfurters and spent several hours walking up and down Unter den Linden trying to get rid of chronic indigestion. Not that the author's purpose is remotely trivial. He describes how the old liberal order collapsed in the 1930s thanks to the first world war and the communist revolution in Russia. He is as at ease dealing with the New Deal in the USA or the Ukrainian Famine. Inevitably the reader can argue with some of his conclusions - for example on the significance of Appeasement - but there is surely no better summary of what happened,and why, in the panorama which preceded the second world war.

I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of Piers Brendon before because this book is as good as history books can get. Incredible detail on a period that is rarely studied at this depth. The writing is excellent, almost novelistic in detail. An incredible amount of research must have gone into writing this. If you are a reader of history as I am, YOU NEED TO BUY THIS BOOK.

This book helped me understand much more about how the second world war came about. I also understand better the underlying reasons and mechanisms for modern day tensions and conflicts. A bit hard going at times, but fascinating and incredibly entertaining at others.

Having found Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire an entertaining and informative read I turned with a sense of expectation to his earlier work: a global history of Auden's low dishonest decade "The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s".This 600 page tome is a massive montage of anecdotes, events and personalities that in combination with Brendon's well reasoned analysis, readable and sharply witty prose are woven together into a seamless whole that charts the experience of 8 major countries (The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, The Soviet Union, China and Japan) through out the decade that lead to the Second World War. Like his work on the British Empire this book will entertain and inform those with a general interest in the era without over simplifying the issues at stake. Though there are occasions when Brendon's virtuoso performance does appear to go astray (as in the case of the British Royal Family) the reader will rarely be bored and as un-edified as they might expect.The central theme of this book is the experience of the Great Depression and the effect this had on developments within the 8 individual countries, the relations between them and how this lead on towards War. While not being a book that is academic, or intensely analytical, it is aware of the Economic factors that lead to the bloodiest conflict in world history, especially those differences between the "Have" and the "Have-not" powers (the Empire light Germany, Italy and Japan). Those parts that deal with the tensions in Japan between the military and the liberal internationally minded political establishment were of particular interest, as is the account of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the devastating "famine" and purges within the Soviet Union. In the middle of the work, Brendon takes us out-with the 8 core countries of his study (but not out of their influence) into an account of the Spanish Civil War. This acts the part of a microcosm of central issues such as Fascism's violently revisionist activism, Soviet intervention and the follies of non-intervention by the Americans, British and French: equivalent to the policy of appeasement applied by the British and French to Nazi Germany.Brendon seems to be a specialist in writing broad based books that engage the larger historical issues without shirking the responsibility a writer has of being readable. Recommended to those who are relatively new to the subject, and those who are not so new will be sure to find something that is new.

A wonderful cruise through the decade before WW2. Clearly written, detailed, great character portraits.The perfect thing to step out of your life for a week by time travel in book form.(I think I might narrate it to myself, so I can listed in a year or so!)

the 1930s!what an important epoch.The Dark Valley is actually really interesting and written in a riveting manner. Really enjoying aspects on Mussolini and Italy / europeans in Africa.

Piers Brendan writes beautifully with compassion, wit, immense scholarship and perfect prose.