Professor Onésimo Díaz: "To know what is happening now in the world you have to know the history of the last 150 years".

class "I have been teaching history for more than twenty years and I have realized that film and literature are good allies to explain what happened and why an event happened in one way and not in another," explains Onésimo Díaz, a professor at the University of Navarra.

This book is the result of some classes of a subject called "History, culture and Christianity in the twentieth century", which with time and patience have been transformed into an informative essay . The author intends to reflect 150 years of world history, from 1870 to the year 2020, through ten novels and their film adaptations: The Leopard, Doctor Zhivago, The Cardinal, Return to Brideshead, The Grapes of Wrath, The Remains of the Day, The Twenty-fifth Hour, The Third Man, Live! and Comets in the Sky.

Throughout ten chapters, the author analyzes and synthesizes the most relevant events of recent history: the turn of the century, the two world wars, the Cold War, decolonization, the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and the threat of global terrorism, etc.

In Professor Diaz's opinion, "the reader will learn about stories, which allow us to approach the past and raise questions in order to understand the present, through great novels and films. Freedom and oppression, war and peace, Christianity and secularization, and other vital themes appear in works of fiction that captivate us. In these pages we will see how the great events of recent history are related to what is reflected in films and novels. A good novel can be like an open door to the past, allowing us to approach other lives and put ourselves in the place of the other; and a good film can illuminate an aspect of history and even offer a new perspective".

Onésimo Díaz Hernández, historian and priest, is researcher and professor of Contemporary History, Deputy Director of the Center of programs of study Josemaría Escrivá (CEJE), professor of Master's Degree in Christianity and Contemporary Culture and member of group of research in Recent History (GIHRE) at the University of Navarra. He is the author of seventeen books and more than forty articles in specialized journals of contemporary history.