A Short History of the Future is a book by W. Warren Wagar which was first published in 1989 and underwent two substantive revisions (1992 and 1999).
The first section deals with the present time leading up to Wagar's idea of the seminal event of the 21st century — a devastating nuclear conflict between Europe and the United States which is subsequently known as the "catastrophe.
What emerges after the "catastrophe" is a socialist world government, which lasts for the next hundred years until the "small revolution" of the late 22nd century, the description of which closes the book.
Each chapter of A Short History of the Future concludes with a selection of a diary or correspondence to give the reader a sense of the daily life of the related periods.
As a historian, Wagar essentially wanted to write a book in which one could fully explore what living in a truly socialist world might be like, or an anarchic one (represented by his Small Revolution).