In The World Aflame, noted author and historian Dan Jones once again teams up with visual artist Marina Amaral. Amaral’s specialty is the colorization of historical photographs. She takes the black and white originals and, only after much research, adds color to the image that is as historically accurate as possible. It is upon those photographs that this book is built.

Through the roughly 200 colorized photographs and their short accompanying text readers are taken on a global tour of those turbulent years in a way I had yet to experience in a book. We start with a photograph that shows the waning days of the previous era — one taken in London in 1910 of the funeral procession for Edward VII. It included nine kings and emperors along with a host of princess, princesses, and other royalty. Seeing the vivid pomp and splendor, one would easily be forgiven if you momentarily scoffed at the idea that most of these royals, along with the centuries old traditions and institutions that surrounded them, would be deposed or dead within the decade. From there the book progresses chronologically: briefly through the lead up to World War I, then the horrors of the Great War itself before detailing the interwar years, all leading to the climax of World War II.

There are stirring photographs of smartly dressed young men marching in their sendoff parades to glorious battle, followed by the haunting images of battlefields littered with the dead in torn and tattered dress, some still in their complete human form while others having been reduced to mere pieces. There are the stately portraits of the major leaders and players during these years: Chamberlain, Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, and many others. The most meaningful and lasting images of the book are those of the ordinary people caught up in the storm that was this time period. The Armenian woman kneeling over a dead girl during the genocide at the close of World War I, the starving Russian children during the famines of 1921 and 1922, the Auschwitz entry photo of Czeslawa Kwoka — a 14 year old Roman Catholic Pole deported along with her mother to clear her home village for future German settlement, and a French woman, head shaven, being forcibly paraded through a newly liberated French town to publicly shame her for allegedly consorting with the Germans during occupation are just four of the countless images that stayed with me after I finished the book.

Alongside each photograph is a short, two to four paragraph caption by Dan Jones. The captions give the reader a clear understanding of the who and what is going on in the photograph, along with how this specific freeze frame interconnects with the larger global geopolitical events. The calm, evenhanded manner of Jones’ writing is the perfect compliment to the bold and dramatic nature of the photographs.

This book would serve as a great introduction to the complex storylines of this time period for the novice historian, but it also would provide a deeper human perspective and nuanced narrative for someone well read on this history. As much of our modern world was forged, for better or for worse, during the course of these years, this is an important reading, and viewing, to better understand not only our past but also our present.