Search - Various Artists :: Great Moments of the 20th Century

Rhino Records has again put together a beautiful and comprehensive history book cleverly disguised as a CD package. As with the superb Voices of the Shoah and Great Speeches of the 20th Century, the Rhino producers have used the spoken word as the central means of conveying historical moments and, in the process, have made history come alive. Tastefully packaged in a 100-page, spiral-bound book, the audio moments are numerically documented with concise, track-by-track blurbs. Reading and listening to these snapshots in time provide a perfect way to memorialize this remarkable century. The three CDs move chronologically. The first volume, "The New Century, the World Wars and Fragile Peace," covers the first half of the century. The second volume, "The Atomic Era, the Cold War, and the '60s," spans 1953 to 1969, and the last volume, "Equal Rights, Watergate, and Glasnost," covers the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Most of the sound bites, which are about a minute long each, concern national and global politics from a strictly American point of view, but there are a number of cultural artifacts as well. Ernest Hemingway's acceptance of the Nobel Prize and Henry Miller's recitation from Tropic of Cancer are as compelling as speeches from Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. News accounts of the Hindenburg disaster and the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting are riveting as well. The producers refer to the package in music terminology, calling it a sort of greatest hits collection, but this excellent compilation, which functions primarily as an ideal reference book, deserves a place in libraries and classrooms as well as in private collections. --Wally Shoup