Europe in the Modern World: A New Narrative History

Europe in the Modern World, Second Edition, is an engaging narrative history of Europe since 1500. Written by an award-winning teacher and scholar, it highlights the major episodes of the European past and vividly connects those episodes to major international events. Each chapter opens with a compelling biographical sketch that gives the book’s ideas a vibrant, human face. Europe in the Modern World pays considerably more attention to economic history than other textbooks do, demonstrating the role that economic developments–and the political, social, and cultural responses to them–play in shaping the political and social life of a given age. By taking politics and economics seriously while doing justice to social and cultural life, this unique book explains the key phenomena of the Western past with clarity and verve. It reads not like a typical academic text, but more like the best narrative history.