Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in our Time - Hardcover

This book will almost certainly have a prominent place on the reading lists of courses on contemporary European History. (Christopher Reeves, Political Studies Review)

Wasserstein fashions a powerful narrative. (Sunday Independent.)

This is a huge synthesis marvelously researched, enriched with interesting pictures and a massive bibliography. (Sunday Independent. Milton Shain.)

A rich and broad ranging synthesis...Numerous plums enrich an always fluently written and insightful text that artfully conceals the vast amount of material that has been synthesized. (Mark Mazower. Times Literary Supplement.)

An admirable work of scholarly synthesis, which should be required reading... for anyone absorbed by the perplexing century we recently left behind. (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Spectator)

eloquent, exhaustive and highly learned, this book is both a considerable achievement and an enlivening read...a highly competent and impressive book. (John Bew, Times Higher Education Supplement)

Thoughtful, fast-moving... exciting. As narrative histories of the last century go, this is as good as it gets. (Dominic Sandbrook, Literary Review)

By turns grim, humorous and surprising, this is a fascinating sweep of the century, covering war, politics, and social, cultural and economic change. (Belfast Telegraph)

The twentieth century in Europe witnessed some of the most brutish episodes in history. Yet it also saw incontestable improvements in the conditions of existence for most inhabitants of the continent - from rising living standards and dramatically increased life expectancy, to the virtual elimination of illiteracy, and the advance of women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals to greater equality of respect and opportunity.

It was a century of barbarism and civilization, of cruelty and tenderness, of technological achievement and environmental spoliation, of imperial expansion and withdrawal, of authoritarian repression - and of individualism resurgent.

Covering everything from war and politics to social, cultural, and economic change, Barbarism and Civilization is by turns grim, humorous, surprising, and enlightening: a window on the century we have left behind and the earliest years of its troubled successor.