I Want to Know Now Series
Short, focused books for people who want to understand the big things, fast.
There's a category of subjects most of us mean to understand properly, and then never quite do. The major events of the twentieth century, the lives of the people who shaped them, the forces and breakthroughs that pulled the modern world into the shape we now live in. We know roughly what happened. We don't always know how, or why.
The I Want to Know Now series exists for that gap. Each book takes one big subject, compresses the essentials into around 80 to 110 pages, and tells the story in language that doesn't ask for a degree to follow. The aim is the shape of the thing, told well, in an evening or two of reading.
How the World Changed Forever
The first sub-collection in the series focuses on the events and figures that broke the twentieth century into its different halves. Three titles to date, all available on Amazon now.
World War Two, How the World Changed Forever
The book that picks up where the first ends. How the Treaty of Versailles seeded the next war, how one bitter Austrian corporal turned a defeated nation into a continent-wide threat, the rise of Japan, and the major battles and decisions that shaped the world we live in now.
Paperback, 111 pages. Published 17 July 2017.
World War Two, How the World Changed Forever
The book that picks up where the first ends. How the Treaty of Versailles seeded the next war, how one bitter Austrian corporal turned a defeated nation into a continent-wide threat, the rise of Japan, and the major battles and decisions that shaped the world we live in now.
Paperback, 111 pages. Published 17 July 2017.
Hitler, How the World Changed Forever
How an obscure failed artist became one of the most consequential figures in modern history. The book traces his early life, his improbable rise, the engine of his ideology, and the arc of his final decline.
Paperback, 80 pages. Published 31 May 2017.
A note on the first editions
These three titles were published in 2017 under the pen name Steven Vern, as part of my original self-publishing experiment, before SPV Creative Press existed as an imprint. They're being re-issued under SPV across 2026, with revised editions, new covers, and a cleaner design across the whole series. The current paperbacks on Amazon remain available and are still worth reading; the republished editions will be announced here when they're ready.
What's coming next
The series will keep its core promise (one big subject, short, clear, well-told) and will expand beyond twentieth-century history into other events, lives and ideas worth understanding properly. The next titles are in development.
Get notified when the new editions launch
The republished versions of the existing books, and each new title as it arrives, will be announced first to people on the I Want To Know Now mailing list (enter your contact details and mention 'I want to know list').