Europe: A History Author: Norman Davies | Language: English | ISBN:
0195209125 | Format: PDF
Europe: A History Description
"In the beginning," writes Norman Davies, "there was no Europe. All there was, for five million years, was a long, sinuous peninsula with no name, set like the figurehead of a ship on the prow of the world's largest land mass. To the west lay the ocean which no one had crossed. To the south lay two enclosed and interlinked seas, sprinkled with islands, inlets, and peninsulas of their own. To the north lay the great polar icecap, expanding and contracting across the ages like some monstrous, freezing jellyfish. To the east lay the land-bridge to the rest of the world, whence all peoples and all civilizations were to come." So begins Davies's magisterial Europe, a master work of history that stretches from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, as it tells the story of Europe, East and West, from prehistory to the present day.
Davies's absorbing narrative captures the full drama of European history, on a sweeping canvas filled with fascinating detail, analysis, and anecdotes. It is a glorious chronicle packed with momentous events: the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric (leader of the Vandals) and Atilla (leader of the Huns), the Norman conquests of Sicily and England, the Papal struggles for power, the Crusades, the Black Death, the sack of Constantinople, the growth of cities such as Venice, Ghent, London, and Paris, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, Europe's rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars. Davies omits nothing. We read not only of the great figures and events of European history--battles, usurpations, tyrants, and saints--but of philosophers, scientists, writers, and artists; the great explorations; the stateless nation and the nation-state. Minority communities, from heretics and lepers to Jews, Romanies, and Muslims, have not been forgotten in this vast tapestry. And Davies has also added 299 "time-capsules," small, self-contained sections that focus intensely on an aspect of an age, to attain a greater sense of immediacy, a sharper picture of life as it was--articles that range from "Erotic Graffiti at Pompeii," to "Stradivarius," to "Psychoanalyzing Hitler." And there are also twelve "snapshots"--fascinating glimpses of moments frozen in time, such as "Knossos 1628 BC," or "Constantinople AD 230," or "Nuremberg 1945." And finally, the book features over one hundred superbly detailed maps and diagrams, and seventy-two black-and-white plates.
Never before has such an ambitious history of Europe been attempted. In range and ambition, originality of structure and glittering style, Norman Davies's Europe represents one of the most important and illuminating histories to be published in recent years.
- Hardcover: 1392 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1st edition (December 5, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0195209125
- ISBN-13: 978-0195209129
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 2.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
This book has proven to be one of my most valuable desk references. I wished I had bought the hardback, given the wear and tear on it over the 6 years I have had it. Davies has done a marvelous job of condensing a tremendous amount of history into one volume. He approaches it in a three-fold way. He provides a richly flowing narrative that covers the story of Europe much like an epic novel. He intersperses the narrative with an extensive series of "Capsules" that take in special events and interesting asides in the development of a European identity. Lastly, he provides a massive set of appendices that cover everything from royal lines to WWII death tolls.
The narrative is divided into a set of 12 chapters that cover broad periods of time starting with the environment and prehistory of the contintnet to the Cold War era. Davies has a tremendous command of the events which shaped Europe. His strength lies in his understanding of Eastern Europe, and in particular Poland, expanding the breadth of the continent beyond its usual eastern borders. In fact one might say that Davies has made the case to rethink European history along Eastern European lines, which is the logical extension of his earlier two-volume history of Poland. He takes in Russian history, with special attention to its Slavic roots. He deals with the inevitable conflicts that arose and provides good summaries of the World Wars. He deals with the restoration of Western Europe and the demise of Eastern Europe following WWII along ideological lines, noting how one rose at the expense of the other. He chooses to end his narrative with the collapse of the Soviet Union, providing a short epilogue on his thoughts concerning the new allignments in Europe.
This is a totally absorbing, sparkling romp over the just completed millennium of European history. A fantastic job, although I will agree with other reviewers that this can be a tough read if you are not already familiar with much of the range of ethnic and national history.
Davies clearly states his premise in the Introduction.....his desire to provide a single volumn survey that provides an evenly magnified view from both the number of pages per year and the geographic/ethnic perspective of the writer. His objective is to avoid focusing on recent centuries or recently predominant cultures at the expense of more distant or less studied times or regions. This alone is a worthy effort and makes the entire tome almost an obligatory read for a serious amateur historian like myself.
Davies provides several ingenious aids to your perspective as you plow through this vast field of information. There are 300 capsules that entertain as well as provide tangential sideshows. (Did you know that Pope John Paul II approved the exhumation of Elizabeth of Austria's tomb in 1973 in an attempt to foser Polish patriotism, yet 16 people may have died from the bacilli that were released? Or, how about stretching your mind by trying to comprehend the horror of Stalin's genocidal act of state policy as he created an artificial famine by cordoning off the Ukraine in 1932-3 until 7 million people were dead?) This is a powerful book.
Even better is the orientation of the European maps throughout the book so that you are looking at them with the west uppermost, thus viewing the continent as the first settlers (and more importantly, central and eastern Europeans) perceived their relationships.
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