This course is divided into two parts. In the first part, I will discuss the main events and transformations that occurred starting from the second industrial revolution, to the end of the cold war. Topics covered in the first part include: imperialism between the end of 1800s and the beginning of 1900s; mass society and the formation of modern political parties; the first world war; the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet Union; fascism; the 1929 economic crisis, the United States and Europe in the 1930s; nazism; the second world war; the new international system and the cold war; the decolonization and the Third-World countries; the chinese revolution; the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; international economic transformations and the deindustrialization; fall of communism in the USSR and in Eastern Europe. In the second part, I will discuss both Italy in the post World War II years, and then the political, economic, and social transformation from the fall of fascism to the crisis of the political system of the 1990s.