Often thought of as a gray decade, the 1950s emerge here as tense and contentious, with matters both national and global plaguing the Western powers and baiting the Russian bear.

Simon Hall, an English author and lecturer on American history, examines the crises that took place in the eponymous year, showing significant linkages while avoiding easy conclusions. His book, organized episodically, begins with the bombing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s home on January 30th, using that incident to highlight the impending dissolution of hardcore segregation in the American South. He juxtaposes the struggles of American blacks with seminal events in South Africa, notably the trial of Nelson Mandela, the Women’s March and other indicators of the ultimate downfall of apartheid. In Africa, Ghana would be the first nation to break from its colonial overlords, while on its northern shores, Tunisians and Algerians rose up against French oppressors, resorting to violence where diplomacy and democracy were not an option. In Egypt, the Suez crisis heralded the end of the British Empire and gave the United States, under the strong hand of Dwight Eisenhower, an indisputable place at the table of world politics. And on a little island in the Caribbean, a bearded self-styled communist rebel was plotting the overthrow of a hated dictator.

"The parallels from continent to continent are nearly undeniable, and one can postulate from Simon’s lively account that there was, if not a direct connection between all these happenings, certainly a notable ricochet effect."

Perhaps some of the biggest headlines that year focused on a handful of Hungarian freedom fighters whose willingness to take on the Goliath of the Soviet Union gained them the sympathy of the free world. Though their effort failed, the attention it drew and the confusion it sowed in a vast nation already reeling from Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of the great god Stalin forced the Soviets to develop a communism with a more human face. This brought the Chinese into the picture as the Reds we loved to hate, or, for some of us, the communists we could still admire.

It would be hard to disagree with Dr. King, who stated at the time that “All over the world, men are in revolt.” With the hindsight of history, Simon shows how the actions of 1956 engendered clear consequences in later decades, actions like Eisenhower’s support of the nationalist forces in the little-known country of Vietnam, and orders to the French army in northern Africa to “shoot down every Arab we met.” In the American South, the whites who attempted to squelch black activists only stirred them to stand and resist, and the suppression of reasonable voices in South Africa opened the way to full-scale armed conflict.

1956 is a study of revolution in action and in thinking. The parallels from continent to continent are nearly undeniable, and one can postulate from Simon’s lively account that there was, if not a direct connection between all these happenings, certainly a notable ricochet effect.