Europe: A History
(Norman Davies)
Europe: A History is exactly that - a history of Europe. This is a fascinating and compelling narrative from Norman Davies that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in European history. However, it is not for the intellectually faint-hearted and if you are going to read it from cover to cover then you should probably set aside a considerable number of hours. While not everyone will agree with all of Davies' opinions, it will certainly provide them with food for thought on the big questions - for example, what is Europe? Is it a continent, or an idea? After reading this book readers can draw their own conclusions based on the comprehensive material that Davies presents.
The book is written in a chronological fashion - I personally prefer this, even if others do not. The author commences with the early period of European history (sometimes referred to as pre-history), followed by a discussion of the Greek and Roman periods, the 'barbarian' Germanic invasions, the 'Dark Ages', the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the modernisation of Europe and the contemporary era. In a nutshell, Davies takes the reader from the pre-literary age right through to the late 1990s. The text is peppered with what he calls 'capsules' - small quantities of specific information about various cultural and social curiosities. The mixture of urbane narrative with pockets of micro-history provides a complex cerebral experience. You could almost read the text and the capsules separately - I found myself jumping between the two. Europe: A History is a considerable achievement, given that Norman Davies has attempted to compact two or three thousand years of history into about 1300 pages, which includes text, capsules, appendix and quite a number of maps. If you like your history savvy, sophisticated and intellectually absorbing, you're going to love this.
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