Books in Monumental Milestones: Great Events of Modern Times series

The building of the Panama Canal was one of the great engineering feats of the twentieth century. For hundreds of years, mankind had dreamed about cutting through the Isthmus of Panama to build a canal, but the jungle, insects, and the damp, humid conditions had always combined to defeat any and all attempts to construct the waterway. It took the discovery of the mosquito as a disease carrier, the tenacity of the workmen, and the single-minded stubbornness of Theodore Roosevelt to make the canal dream a reality. But if the canal made some men great, it also destroyed the lives of others. That was the sad fate of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps of France, a national hero who had done the impossible by building the Suez Canal, then failed in Panama. The fate of de Lesseps is as much the story of the Panama Canal as is the success of Roosevelt.

The Great Depression was one of the worst crises of the twentieth century. For some time, the very survival of the country appeared to be at stake. Businesses failed, banks closed, people lost their homes, and thousands lined up at soup kitchens across the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed "a new deal," and in 1932 he was elected president. Many of his New Deal policies shaped the country in ways that are still visible today, like Social Security and the 40-hour work week. The government struggled to help the people and to keep the economy stable.The Great Depression could not be legislated out of existence, however. Only a world war was able to vanquish it.

Soviet history begins with bloodshed, oppression, and strife. Civil War stained the Russian landscape with the blood of its people after Nicholas II abdicated his throne to a provisional gov-ernment. The Bolsheviks wanted Russia, and eventually they took her. Peasants became citizens with rights, but the truth is, the civil war only changed the name of their oppressor from czar to Communist dictator. After decades of isolation and sometimes harsh living conditions, Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in an age of reform, but in doing so, he made enemies. Then, Boris Yeltsin championed reform and the rights of the people. When Communist hard-liners made one last effort to regain control, Yeltsin held his ground. Unlike its birth, the death of the Soviet Union saw little bloodshed. After seventy years, even the Communist hard-liners no longer had the stomach for killing their citizens to keep control. The union dissolved in 1991.

The Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was one of the worst defeats in U.S. military history. It began a string of Japanese successes that seemed to threaten the security of the United States. Many U.S. citizens and government leaders were on the verge of panic. But the attack was probably the greatest mistake the Japanese made during World War II. At that time, many Americans didn't want to go to war. The anger and outrage that followed the attack swept away those objections. It unified the country and made the United States detemined to win the war. From a strategic point of view, the attack probably wasn't necessary. The United States military was not prepared to fight a war. The Japanese probably could have achieved their goals if they hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor. They concentrated on the wrong targets. They sank or damaged ships that would play a minor role in the conflict to follow.

It was a beautiful late summer morning, the kind of day even busy New Yorkers took a moment to appreciate. The sky was spectacularly clear, tinted an azure blue, the air stirred by a gentle breeze. The mood of the city seemed optimistic as people hurried down the crowded streets on their way to work. Then the world as people knew it changed forever . . . The attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and New York City s World Trade Center by three fuel-laden, hijacked airplanes was the worst attack ever on mainland American soil. The nation watched in horror as the events were captured by video and live news coverage. The attacks temporarily brought the nation to a stop, both emotionally and literally for the first time, all commercial flights were grounded. Ironically, the attacks intended to undercut America s way of life only served to reinforce its core values. And out of the carnage of that day came acts of unspeakable bravery, uncommon courage, and true heroism.

For centuries, ordinary Russians lived under the absolute power of the czars, the country s hereditary rulers. For many, such a life involved few rights and grinding poverty. The Russian people increasingly wanted a greater voice in the way they were governed and a higher standard of living. These desires put pressure on the government of the czars. The civil unrest finally came to a head in 1917. The last czar, Nicholas II, was overthrown in what history calls the Russian Revolution. But the government still wasn t stable. Russians realized they had no more freedom under the new communist government than they had had under the czars. Find out about the events that led up to the Russian Revolution, one of the landmark events of the twentieth century, and the decades of conflict that followed.

There is perhaps no greater symbol of both political oppression and the human spirit in the 20th century than the Berlin Wall. Built during the height of the Cold War in 1961, the Wall was meant to both stop the number of citizens trying to leave East Germany for the freedoms and opportunities of the West and to prevent people spreading the ideals of democracy from coming in. In the 28 years the Wall stood, it is estimated over 1,000 people were killed trying to escape into West Berlin. In the end, the Wall fell without a shot being fired. As Mikhail Gorbachev was laying the foundations for the peaceful dismantling of the Soviet Union, the people of East Berlin and East Germany began demanding their city and country be freed from Soviet occupation. Finally, in November 1989, the Wall was torn down and Germany was once again reunited. This is the story of the dark rise and the eventual uplifting triumph over the Wall that split not only a city and nation, but friends and families.

When the Great War began in August 1914, many people thought it would be over by Christmas. Instead it lasted for more than four years and claimed millions of lives. One dominant feature of the conflict was the seemingly endless miles of trenches that faced each other, often just a few hundred yards apart. The only way of attacking was through brutal frontal assaults. Often thousands of men died in a few hours. When they weren t fighting, men lived in subhuman conditions in the trenches. Many people hoped that the horrors of the Great War would make it the war to end all wars. It wasn t. The victorious Allies imposed very harsh terms on the defeated Germans. These terms led directly to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of World War II just twenty years later.

The McCarthy Era was the product of Joseph McCarthy, one of the most notorious politicians in United States history. Obsessed with routing out communists, McCarthy persecuted thousands of innocent Americans, destroying careers and ruining many lives. His tactics of making public accusations based on innuendo instead of proof became known as McCarthyism. From the time he was a child growing up in Wisconsin, McCarthy burned with ambition. As a teenager he started his own business; he earned his high school diploma in less than a year; and he became the youngest circuit court judge in state history. When he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he became the youngest senator in Congress. By the 1950s, average Americans viewed communism as a direct threat to their democratic way of life. McCarthy played on those fears to persecute anyone suspected of having communist affiliations. His crusade brought him power and fame and ultimately led to his stunning public downfall.

The Vietnam War sparked one of the most controversial periods in American history. Although Vietnam had been fighting for its independence for thousands of years, the United States didn t enter the picture until the 1950s. Increasing tensions between North and South Vietnam officially brought the U.S. into the war in 1964. At the same time, a military draft was instituted. People struggled to understand the role of the U.S. in Vietnam. Americans began learning more about the Vietnam War through television. As the first televised war, Americans were treated to horrific scenes with their evening news. Popular magazines and newspapers published the effects of battle on their front pages. These images added to the antiwar sentiment. Meanwhile, three million U.S. troops faced constant danger in a war eventually determined to be unwinnable. After more than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, the U.S. finally pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, and South Vietnam fell in 1975. The effects of the war would last much longer.

Early in January 2005, high officials of many world governments gathered in the Polish town of Auschwitz. They were there to remember the sixtieth anniversary of its liberation from Nazi tyranny. The concentration camp at Auschwitz is the primary symbol of one of the worst crimes ever committed against human beings: the Holocaust. Under the orders of German dictator Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust was the organized killing of an estimated six million Jews. The horror extended to millions of other people. They had the misfortune of being different from "normal" Germans. The Holocaust was a Monumental Milestone in that it made people recognize the importance of human rights and realize how easily fellow humans can violate those rights. It stands as a warning for all future generations.