Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time

Here is the definitive history of contemporary Europe a controversial but authoritative and lively narrative that is destined to become the standard account of the period from 1914 to the present. In this superb volume esteemed historian Bernard Wasserstein offers the first serious full-length history of a century of convulsive change. It is a history of barbarism and civilization of cruelty and tenderness of technological achievement and environmental blight of imperial expansion and withdrawal of authoritarian repression and of individual rebirth. Wasserstein provides both a narrative of the main contours of the political diplomatic and military history and an analysis the underpinnings of demographic economic and social developments. Drawing on the latest scholarly findings including recent disclosures of intelligence materials and archival revelations that followed the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe Wasserstein captures the essence of contemporary European history in an engaging narrative that is by turns grim humorous surprising and enlightening.