This book lacked an overall thesis or unifying theme to describe the 20th century, which is OK I guess. Maybe part of the strangeess is that there isn't one to be found. I liked many of the individual ideas Higgs put forward, especially his anarchic perspective which is not heavy handed and political. His optimism about the power of the network seems misplaced, but maybe with the rise of the open source, decentralised, post-surveillance web things will turn around.