The Chronicle of the 20th Century is a book franchise created by the German journalist and publisher Bodo Harenberg in the 1980s and licensed around the world. It consists of a month-by-month chronicle of the events of the twentieth century, with each entry written as though it were a contemporary news report. Books under this title were published in multiple countries, but with independently prepared content from the perspective of each country's news sources.
The book was noted for its size, with the British edition coming with its own carry-case and handle, and observed to be "the first coffee table book seriously to threaten the well-being of coffee-tables".[1] The U.S. edition was named "1987 Book of the Year" by American and Canadian booksellers and the British edition was reprinted three times within the first two years, but the format was criticised as a gimmick that was incompatible with the claim of its editor to give the reader "the high ground of hindsight".[2]