Robert, a British doctor haunted by World War II memories, agrees to write a biography of a renowned specialist in memory loss who possesses unsettling knowledge of Robert's past.

"The Color of Time spans more than one hundred years of world history--from the reign of Queen Victoria and the American Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the beginning of the Space Age. It charts the rise and fall of empires, the achievements of science, industrial developments, the arts, the tragedies of war, the politics of peace, and the lives of men and women who made history. This illustrated narrative is a collaboration between a gifted...

"The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, all of the hospital's electricity mysteriously fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff sees a healthy baby boy-with pitch-black skin-born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. "A childbirth is an explosion," the ancient physician says by way of explanation. "Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn't...

Examines the fundamental question of our times: why was the 20th century so violent? It looks at the ideologies that promised utopias and total solutions to social problems and relates the terrible human toll of attempts to realize these ideas.