The book examines the evolution of the predicament symbolised by the setting of the Doomsday Clock at a few minutes to midnight in the context of the Anthropocene Era from 1763, making special reference to the study of history.
Born in Wallington, Surrey in 1934, Paul Dukes was taught History at the local grammar school by the late Dr E. N. Williams. He was an Exhibitioner at Peterhouse, Cambridge from 1951 to 1954, graduating with a BA Honours in History. He was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Washington from 1954 to 1956, completing an MA in American History with a thesis on the colonial period. [NP] From 1957 to 1959, he was a National Serviceman in the Intelligence Corps, studying Russian at the Joint Services School for Languages at Crail. From 1959 to 1964 he taught American History for the University of Maryland Overseas while writing a thesis on eighteenth-century Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London. In 1964 he was appointed Assistant at the University of Aberdeen, with which he is still associated, from 1999 as Emeritus Professor. He has held visiting appointments at Auckland and Cornell. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1999, and is on the Editorial Board of ‘History Today’. [NP] Paul Dukes has published widely on Russian, European and world history. His works include a range of monographs as well as general histories of Russia and Europe and a series of studies on the relationship between the USA and USSR. He has a son and a daughter and three grandchildren.
