Summary
An Economist Best Book of the Year
"Sweeping . . . an ambitious synthesis . . . [Evans] writes with admirable narrative power and possesses a wonderful eye for local color . . . Fascinating."--Stephen Schuker, The Wall Street Journal
From the bestselling author of The Third Reich at War, a masterly account of Europe in the age of its global hegemony; the latest volume in the Penguin History of Europe series
Richard J. Evans, bestselling historian of Nazi Germany, returns with a monumental new addition to the acclaimed Penguin History of Europe series, covering the period from the fall of Napoleon to the outbreak of World War I. Evans's gripping narrative ranges across a century of social and national conflicts, from the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 to the unification of both Germany and Italy, from the Russo-Turkish wars to the Balkan upheavals that brought this era of relative peace and growing prosperity to an end. Among the great themes it discusses are the decline of religious belief and the rise of secular science and medicine, the journey of art, music, and literature from Romanticism to Modernism, the replacement of old-regime punishments by the modern prison, the end of aristocratic domination and the emergence of industrial society, and the dramatic struggle of feminists for women's equality and emancipation. Uniting the era's broad-ranging transformations was the pursuit of power in all segments of life, from the banker striving for economic power to the serf seeking to escape the power of his landlord, from the engineer asserting society's power over the environment to the psychiatrist attempting to exert science's power over human nature itself.
The first single-volume history of the century, this comprehensive and sweeping account gives the reader a magnificently human picture of Europe in the age when it dominated the rest of the globe.
Author Notes
Richard J. Evans was born in London and educated at Oxford University. He has taught at Columbia University and Birkbeck, University of London, and since 2014 has been the Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge. His many publications include an acclaimed three-volume history of the Third Reich and a recent collection of essays, The Third Reich in History and Memory . A Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, he is a past winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and was twice a History Honoree at the Los Angeles Times Book Awards. In 2012 he was appointed Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honors List, for services to scholarship.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Evans, a professor emeritus of history at Cambridge University who is best known for his three-volume history of Nazi Germany, enhances his reputation with this analysis of Europe during the century leading to the Great War. He concentrates on the now-unfashionable issue of power: who had it, who wanted it, and how it was achieved and retained. Evans doesn't simply focus on war and diplomacy-he defines power broadly to include advances in medicine and technological sources of literal power, from steam to electricity. As the integrated developments of personal freedom, mastery over nature, and the rise of nationalism nurtured one another, Europe became the focus of "a process of globalization" in which capital, goods, people, and ideas flowed "from continent to continent." This was an "age of emotion" characterized by a passion for knowledge and the pursuit of happiness in an increasingly secularized and gendered environment. Governments and societies responded to the resulting "challenge of democracy" by barreling forward until the catastrophe of 1914, which "was a surprise to almost everyone"-and perhaps should not have been. Evans demonstrates expertise of a broad spectrum of specialized sources and synthesizes his research into a work "designed to be read through from start to finish." (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A 100-year survey of European history that moves by transnational themes emphasizing powerover industrialization, class, selfhood, wages, and nature.In this sweeping survey, accomplished British historian Evans (Emeritus, History/Univ. of Cambridge; The Third Reich in History and Memory, 2015, etc.), a winner of the Wolfson History Prize, does not neglect the convulsive changes that occurred among the nonelite across Europe. His forte is his emphasis on how the Republican ideals ignited by the French Revolution, promulgated and corrupted by Napoleon and severely suppressed in many places afterward, never died among a growing class of proletariat and petty bourgeoisie (e.g., in France) who were dissatisfied with the authoritarian policies of the Restoration. While the European powers were reorganizing after the Congress of Vienna, the revolutionary genie was out of the bottle, as evidenced by the subsequent Decembrist uprising in Russia, the Polish officers insurrection, the movement for Greek independence, and the July Revolution of 1830, among others, all creating ramifications that would explode by midcentury. With the emancipation of the serfsAlexander IIs rationale was that it was better to abolish serfdom from above, than to wait until the serfs begin to liberate themselves from belowmany faced new economic hardships (e.g., the decline of the sharecropping system) leading to peasant revolts and famine since most people lived on the land and depended on it for survival. Pauperism increased (see: the Irish famine) and, with the conquering of rail, steam, and speed, the European working class rose as well. With the advent of the second Industrial Revolution, the British imperial lead declined, and the German economy took center stage. With the urbanization of Europe, Evans meticulously follows the accompanying developments in culturein literature (Charles Dickens novels), the adoption of the metric system, the Dreyfus Affair, and the general shrinkage of space. An immensely readable work that considers incremental continental developments up to the outbreak of war in 1914.nbsp;nbsp; Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Evans, professor emeritus of history at the University of Cambridge, presents the latest edition in the Penguin History of Europe series. It is a massive and masterful account running from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the onset of the Great War. As Evans illustrates, Europe in 1815 was a devastated continent after decades of incessant warfare. The material destruction was immense, and poor harvests contributed to food shortages and even famine. Hordes of demobilized soldiers created a climate of insecurity and lawlessness. Yet European nation-states, including Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, would emerge to dominate much of the globe politically and economically. Although continent-wide wars were avoided, liberals, conservatives, and socialists across the continent struggled, often violently, for power. Unprecedented technological progress and material wealth were coupled with destitution in newly created slums. Many elites optimistically saw a bright future as Europe slowly approached the abyss of a war that would utterly transform European society. This is a beautifully written, wide-ranging study that explores in depth the political, social, and economic factors that shaped and continue to shape modern Europe and the wider world.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) The Times columnist offers a readable and cohesive explanation of the forces upending our world. THE UNDOING PROJECT: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. (Norton, $28.95.) The psychologists who overturned economists' belief in rational man. WRITING TO SAVE A LIFE: The Louis Till File, by John Edgar Wideman. (Scribner, $25.) An investigation of the execution of Emmett Till's father by the United States military during World War II. A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, by Steven Hahn. (Viking, $35.) Hahn's challenging new history presents the United States as an imperialistic nation from the start. THE PURSUIT OF POWER: Europe 1815-1914, by Richard J. Evans. (Viking, $40.) Evans's sweeping account traces complex, interconnected forces - political, economic and cultural - at work. BEFORE MORNING, by Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Beth Krommes. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17.99; ages 4 to 7.) A child wishes for a blizzard to keep her mother at home in this book-length poem. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MRS. SHARMA, by Ratika Kapur. (Bloomsbury, paper, $16.) A middle-class Delhi woman takes a lover and reflects on her life in this novel of a changing India. IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, by Edward Hoagland. (Arcade, $22.99.) A man copes with diminished vision in Hoagland's emotionally complex novel. JUANA AND LUCAS, written and illustrated by Juana Medina. (Candlewick, $14.99; ages 5 to 8.) A vivid novel about a Colombian girl who learns English. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books.
Choice Review
Evans (emer., Cambridge), well known for his 2003-8 Hitler trilogy--e.g., The Coming of the Third Reich (CH, Oct'04, 42-1171)--has produced a work of scholarly depth on Europe from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the beginning of WWI. The author departs from the traditional focus on diplomacy and war and details areas such as technology and agriculture, medicine, the arts, and the crisis of aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie. Also significant are issues of women and suffrage, and the borders of matrimony in western European countries. Nonetheless, he does not ignore the alliance system set up after Napoleon's defeat, or the 1830 and 1848 stages of revolution in France, Austria, Germany, and Italy. Importantly, Evans realizes the importance of the Napoleonic Code in the years following the French Revolution, and the Emperor's defeat in areas where he had major conquests, such as Germany, Austria, and Italy. The rising middle class no longer tolerated the medieval serf system, and women began to demand equality in the home as well as suffrage at the ballot box (England). Evans is to be praised for his skill in combining selective but crucial biographical detail with major events and historical currents to make a coalesced, singular contribution to the "Penguin History of Europe." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Faculty and professionals. --Andrew Mark Mayer, College of Staten Island
Library Journal Review
Historian Evans (emeritus, history, Univ. of Cambridge; The Third Reich at War) continues the "Penguin History of Europe" series following Ian Kershaw's To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 with this volume that begins after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and recounts pivotal events leading up to 1914, the eve of World War I. In surveying the political, cultural, and economic landscape of Europe during this period, Evans focuses on everyday people, specifically the agrarian as the ruling monarch. With this fairly comprehensive and ambitious appraisal, Evans views this 100-year stretch as a paradigm for the demise of the status quo and the quest for more power on either a macro- or microlevel; whether it be for the aristocrat or the serf. In particular, readers are well served by the author's holistic and refreshing interpretation of these years on a socioeconomic scale. VERDICT Despite its page length, this highly accessible work on a vital period should find eager audiences among casual and general interest readers of European history. However, the lack of footnotes or a further reading section, like other books in the series, is unfortunate. [See Prepub Alert, 5/2/16.]-Ben Neal, Blackwater Regional Lib., VA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
