A Short History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin

British historian Jenkins (A Short History of England) turns his attention to continental Europe in this swift, engaging traditional political history. The book traces “the struggle of people for power over land” and “the extraordinary role of violence, and the technology of violence, in that narrative” in page-turner fashion. (Jenkins acknowledges that famines, plagues, and assorted natural calamities have played roles as well.) Although the primary focus is the men (and rare woman) who have wielded and lost power—among them Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Pope Gregory I, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Napoleon, Bismarck, and Hitler—Jenkins does attend to the cultural and social milieu. “Pen portraits of people and ideas that are important to that story” pepper this history; artists, (Leonardo da Vinci) philosophers (Aristotle, Hegel) and writers (Tolstoy) play their parts. Jenkins also brings in the best work of other historians, from the ancient (Herodotus, Procopius) to the modern (Daniel Boorstin, Peter Frankopan). Entertaining morsels of legend, lore, and gossip add flavor, as when he describes Peter the Great as “brash, high-living, persistently drunk.” Readers of conventional histories—those of the victors, rather than what Jenkins calls “the victims of power”—will find this a pleasurable, erudite tour of 4,000 years of European politics. [em](Mar.) [/em]