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“... characteristics. For thirty years, new theories ruled. That, according to Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, was the trouble. Yergin, like Landes, is a gifted narrator. The Prize, his 1991 history of what he called ‘the epic quest for oil, money and power’ in the 20th century, was an excellent read. The Commanding Heights is equally racy. With ...”

“... but most professed a fervent belief in some of them. Among the physicists, only the Englishman Joseph Rotblat left Los Alamos when the failure of the German nuclear programme became clear, later writing: ‘I saw the destruction of Hiroshima as a wanton, barbaric act, and it made me very angry.’ The experimental physicist Robert Wilson came to regret ...”

“... reason’. Aleister Crowley used peyote in his séances. Frederick Madison Smith, the grandson of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion, explored it as a possible means of achieving religious ecstasy. Smith also lobbied against the prohibition of the peyote religion, which had grown since the 1890s and was now attracting opposition. After a bill to ...”

“... capture Gibraltar. The Turks locked up General Stein in the Veteraner Cave in Hungary, and Emperor Joseph died also. King Gustavus of Sweden conquered Russian Finland, and the French Revolution and the long war began and Emperor Leopold II went to his grave too. Napoleon captured Prussia, and the English bombarded Copenhagen, and the peasants sowed and ...”

“... itself apart before any appreciable thermonuclear processes were initiated. Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, émigré scientists from Hungary and Poland respectively, who were working at Los Alamos, found an ingenious solution in 1951. As part of his work on improved fission weapons Ulam had suggested a two-stage fission design. Teller seized on this ...”

“... would sooner or later join the Franco-British alliance. At first, few Poles shared his optimism. Joseph Conrad, meeting gloomily with Kraków friends as war broke out, thought that it presaged the total dominion of great powers over lesser European nationalities: the extinction of Polish hopes for ever.The war came, and then the iconic day of 6 August ...”

“... route to the cathedral where it still rests today. The story of the deeply eccentric artist-writer Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz may be even stranger than it is in Rév’s version. The Communist government of Poland made an effort in 1988 to show respect for the prewar avant-garde by allowing the cultural opposition to try to reclaim his body from ...”