Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century - Softcover

Glover's approach to history is based on anecdotal and eyewitness accounts, refreshingly clear of statistical marshland, and while he does not shy from unequivocal condemnation, he shows wise restraint in a volume that could as easily have been entitled "Hindsight." Physical distance from battle leading to emotional detachment, distillation of Social Darwinism, "positive hatred", brutalising removal of dignity to render the victim no more than an animal, "cold jokes", lack of individual responsibility and the cult of tribalism are all identified as having contributed to a spirit of partisan malevolence to which, for Glover, the phrase "never again" is the only adequate ethical response. "Where were the philosophers?" runs the refrain of his battle-cry. Watching inactive and inadequate, like most of the rest of us, is the depressingly recurrent reply. The darkness is not unremitting; it is consciously entitled Humanity, and Glover is an optimist, albeit with grave concerns, who strives to highlight individual acts of kindness that transcend circumstance to offer hope for the future. After 10 years of research and writing, he has produced a stirringly intelligent and urgent lament for an arduous century, pockmarked by those who sought to dominate it, and unable to forget as selectively as it remembers. -- David Vincent