conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled Twentieth Century History for Dummies about BBC, History, Magazine with the genre: New, Used & Rental Textbooks, Humanities.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: "This is a fascinating insight into an eventful century" ( BBC History Magazine, April 2008)
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Twentieth Century History for Dummies
  In 1966 Mao's wife Jiang Qing took over the Cultural Affairs Committee of the People's Liberation Army, got her opponents sacked, and set in motion the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao and Jiang Qing declared that China was still riddled with bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and traitors (= people who didn't agree with Mao), especially teachers, lecturers, and the educated professional classes. Lin Biao called on China's young people, whether in school or in university, to rise up and hunt down the traitors.
  The Red Guards were completely out of control. The country, especially the cities, fell into anarchy. Schools and universities were shut and the economy ground to a halt. The rest of the world looked on in horror as China descended into self-destructive chaos.
  Chou En-lai urged Mao to rein the Red Guards in. Chou realised that the Cultural Revolution was doing appalling harm to China's outside image and was creating bitterness that would take years to heal. Workers and peasants were already forming their own committees to oppose the Red Guards and restore order. Finally, in 1968 Mao gave in. He ordered the People's Liberation Army to move in against the Red Guards.
  The Cultural Revolution showed that China wouldn't be changing policy as long as Mao was alive. He regularly went swimming in public, even in China's polluted rivers, to show that he was fit and strong and would be around for a good while yet.
  In 1972 US President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited China and met Mao. Mao's Cultural Revolution (see previous section) had only recently been denouncing everything Western, so this meeting with a pair of anti-communist American Republicans took the world by surprise, to say the least. But in fact the visit made perfect sense:
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Getting the old centrally planned, hopelessly corrupt, and inefficient Soviet-era economy to adjust to a capitalist market economy was bound to create chaos as real prices (as opposed to 'Don't-worry-the-State-will-pay prices') kicked in. Sure enough, the rouble became worthless, inflation rocketed, and so did poverty and unemployment. Russia seemed to be heading back to a barter economy. The old-style communists and Russian nationalists in the Supreme Soviet and in the Congress of People's Deputies decided, 'Enough already! Yeltsin must go!'
  Defeating the October coup made Yeltsin's position a lot stronger, though world opinion was alarmed at the bloodshed. The Russians were more concerned about how long it was taking to get any of the famous benefits from this democracy idea – a few basics in the shops would be nice. No matter how angry they got, though, Yeltsin was always able to deflect their anger away from him. For instance, he won the 1996 presidential elections mainly by cutting the price of vodka. Otherwise, he just sacked whoever was prime minister at the time (he got through prime ministers the way most of us get through hankies) and carried on.
  By 1998 Yeltsin's health was so bad (nearly as bad as the Russian economy's) that he quickly sacked a few more prime ministers and handed power over to his protégé, the scary Head of Russian Intelligence, Vladimir Putin.
  Boris Yeltsin was a colourful character, with a rather alarming tendency to throw off his jacket and party in public. Doing so probably wasn't such a great idea for a man with a serious heart condition, though it was the result of his wholehearted support for the ancient Russian right to drink yourself under the table. Even the Irish, not a people exactly unfamiliar with the bottle, were taken aback when Yeltsin arrived on a state visit to Dublin so blotto he couldn't actually emerge from the plane. On the one hand, Russians quite liked this 'Man of the People' hard-drinking image; on the other, they felt Yeltsin's antics were demeaning. Russians didn't like not being a superpower any more, and Yeltsin's behaviour just rubbed their noses in it.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Russians didn't like not being a superpower any more, and Yeltsin's behaviour just rubbed their noses in it. Sure enough, the rouble became worthless, inflation rocketed, and so did poverty and unemployment. Russia seemed to be heading back to a barter economy. The old-style communists and Russian nationalists in the Supreme Soviet and in the Congress of People's Deputies decided, 'Enough already! Yeltsin must go!'
  Defeating the October coup made Yeltsin's position a lot stronger, though world opinion was alarmed at the bloodshed. The Russians were more concerned about how long it was taking to get any of the famous benefits from this democracy idea – a few basics in the shops would be nice. No matter how angry they got, though, Yeltsin was always able to deflect their anger away from him. For instance, he won the 1996 presidential elections mainly by cutting the price of vodka. Otherwise, he just sacked whoever was prime minister at the time (he got through prime ministers the way most of us get through hankies) and carried on.
  By 1998 Yeltsin's health was so bad (nearly as bad as the Russian economy's) that he quickly sacked a few more prime ministers and handed power over to his protégé, the scary Head of Russian Intelligence, Vladimir Putin.
  Boris Yeltsin was a colourful character, with a rather alarming tendency to throw off his jacket and party in public. Doing so probably wasn't such a great idea for a man with a serious heart condition, though it was the result of his wholehearted support for the ancient Russian right to drink yourself under the table. Even the Irish, not a people exactly unfamiliar with the bottle, were taken aback when Yeltsin arrived on a state visit to Dublin so blotto he couldn't actually emerge from the plane. On the one hand, Russians quite liked this 'Man of the People' hard-drinking image; on the other, they felt Yeltsin's antics were demeaning.Getting the old centrally planned, hopelessly corrupt, and inefficient Soviet-era economy to adjust to a capitalist market economy was bound to create chaos as real prices (as opposed to 'Don't-worry-the-State-will-pay prices') kicked in.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Not for nothing are flares a distress signal. Sailors have long treasured their bell-bottom trousers, but at least they had the decency to wear them at sea. This particular form of horror first hit land in the 1920s in the form of 'Oxford bags'. The fashion didn't last, but returned in the 1970s, growing to ever bigger proportions until air was circulating up and down men's trouser legs and the pavements shone from being swept by the cuffs of thousands of pairs of frayed jeans. Drainpipe trousers returned in the 1980s, when the flares tendency went through the body and emerged at the other end in the biggest hairstyles seen since the eighteenth century. The 1990s brought blessed relief, until some fool came up with the idea of seventies retro and flares came back again. Just bear in mind, you can look intelligent, witty, urbane, handsome, and well dressed, or you can wear flares. Not both.