Junior Chronicle of the Twentieth Century

This is the kind of subject that the DK approach suits best: a thick book bulging with facts, figures and photos, with a headline and a paragraph to each, al about the century that is drawing to a close. It is a year by year account of the significant and the merely diverting. Arbitrarily, each year gets a double page spread, as if history made sure that one year was never more action packed than another. But the editors make up for the imbalance with a large number of double page features on topics as diverse as Pioneers of Aviation, High Life in the Thirties, Occupation and Resistance, and Fifties Toys and Games. Yes, it is a way of putting all those 'Eyewitness' books together in a different order - and it has an inevitable transatlantic feel; but it is done with flair, impeccable design, fine production, the use of a staggering range of photographic sources, and, as important, careful indexing. There is nothing particularly Junior about it. It would probably be most useful in secondary schools. And there is not a great deal about any one thing either: but it is fun to work your way through or dip into. Expensive at £25, it should have the same appeal as the Guinness Book of Records. Open it anywhere and be amazed at what you did not know.