This seems to be the time for large-scale books on the history of twentieth-century Europe. In 2006 Tony Judt published 900 pages on the history of the continent since 1945, and now we have Bernard Wasserstein's equally voluminous account of the entire century. Both works present the reader with a narrative synthesis of vast amounts of information. The target audience of such large-scale efforts is presumably the famous “interested and educated general reader”; 900 pages is a bit heavy for a college textbook. Specialists will find relatively little that is unfamiliar in Wasserstein's book. Their primary interest will be in the author's conceptualization, historiographic interpretations, and the choice (or omission) of the covered topics.

Wasserstein's organization is primarily chronological, although he devotes special chapters to the 1930s, 1960s, and 1990s. The author's geographic treatment is quite balanced. Unlike many others he does not tilt his narrative toward western Europe at the expense of developments in the east. For example, the 1990s are discussed in separate, but very equal chapters.

As the author states, his primary focus is political history, but he is rather too modest about his quite elaborate (some might say excessively so) and lucid analyses of military developments. His treatment of Alltagsgeschichte makes excellent use of comparative statistics and well-done vignettes. Stylistically this is a highly readable and superbly written work. Wasserstein is a gripping writer with a keen eye for felicitous phrases and telling anecdotes. His description of Europe in 1914 as a time of “dying empires” and “rising nation-states” (p. 9) is a typically pithy synopsis of some very complicated developments.

On the issues of methodology and conceptual preferences, Wasserstein emerges as an unabashed personalist/intentionalist. The narrative is carried along by powerful and striking personalities. They are the primary agents of history. Anonymous masses or abstract forces do not play a great role. Typical of this approach is Wasserstein's conclusion that Charles de Gaulle ended the Algerian War “by sheer force of personality” (p. 527). The author also notes that he is aware of the pitfalls of historicism and anxious to avoid them. For the most part he succeeds admirably.

Specialists will be particularly interested in Wasserstein's stand on various historiographic controversies. On the outbreak of World War I the author assigns considerable blame to the French leaders because they put pressure on the Russians to mobilize. He has a similarly negative view of the Serbian elite's role in 1914, and in one of his few historicist allusions, links Serbia's behavior in 1914 to its role in the 1990s. Wasserstein has no sympathy for the Bolsheviks, arguing that the system that was later so cruelly used by Stalin had in fact been put into place by Lenin. The author takes something of a re-revisionist stand on the Versailles Treaty. Contrary to some of the recent literature, he argues that especially the economic provisions were indeed politically counterproductive. His interpretation of the Great Depression is rather more conventional, including that disaster's role in the rise of Hitler. Wasserstein rejects the Goldhagen thesis and describes Hitler's political success as the “product of times profoundly out of joint” (p. 173).

The author's account of the outbreak and conduct of World War II is consistent with his personalist interpretation of history. Consequently, Hitler is responsible for the conflict and its continuation to the bitter end. Wasserstein dismisses the recent thesis that the German attack on the Soviet Union was a preventive action to forestall an imminent aggression by Stalin as “far-fetched” (p. 316). The author's interpretation of the Holocaust is fairly traditional (and relatively brief), although he emphasizes the role of the east European collaborators rather more than others have.

On European developments after 1945 Wasserstein paints a contrasting picture of progress, prosperity, and democracy in the west and increasing misery and despair in the east. In the Soviet empire, after Stalin imposed his will on what the author labels the “neophytes” Truman and Atlee (p. 414), things went rapidly downhill culminating in Leonid Brezhnev's eighteen-year rule of clientelism, corruption, and privilege for the nomenklatura. Mikhail Gorbachev was the last hope of a calcified, dying system, and Wasserstein has high praise for the efforts of the last Soviet leader. Interestingly, he regards Gorbachev's attempt to install perestoika as far more important than his championship of glasnost. The end of the Cold War Wasserstein attributes rather conventionally to the economic weight of the armaments race which the Soviet Union could not sustain.

Wasserstein's heroes in the post-1945 Europe are a few in the west—he clearly admires Jean Monnet—but above all the reformers in the east, many of whom ended tragically. The author has high praise for such figures as Alexander Dubcek and Lech Walesa, who tried to reform the Stalinist system in eastern Europe. To this roster Wasserstein adds Gorbachev. Interestingly, the author gives considerable credit to Willy Brandt for influencing Gorbachev's ideological evolution.

There is, then, much to praise in this valiant and very successful attempt to synthesize a century of European history. Any criticisms? A few, but not many of substance. Specialists in the area of fascism will, I think, be a little disappointed with Wasserstein's rather simplistic treatment of this political phenomenon. Characterizing Mussolini as an “exhibitionist and buffoon” (p. 159) and Hitler as a “self-pitying misanthrope” (p. 317) while dismissing fascist ideas as “the primitive rationalization of gangsterism” (p. 376) may need to be modified in view of a number of recent works that have demonstrated fascism's significance as a viable political force in the first half of the century.

I think it would also have contributed to our appreciation of the new western Europe if in his otherwise eloquent discussion of the transition of authoritarianism to democracy in Spain the author had included something about the positive contribution of such organizations as the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in preparing for this event. After all, here was an instance of, if not nation-building, at least system-building, without the use of either military force or the threat of military force.

The author also has not entirely escaped the pitfalls of predicting the future when dealing with the very recent past. Wasserstein writes that for the foreseeable future the German economy will be “condemned to political indecision and economic stalemate (p. 747). Since the book's publication the German economy has picked up considerably and is doing quite well—which goes to show that we historians are still better at analyzing the past than predicting the future.

Finally, I think I would disagree with Wasserstein's rather pessimistic conclusion about the continuing relationship of barbarism and civilization in Europe. The continent certainly saw a surfeit of barbarism in the last century, but most of it took place in the first half of the twentieth century. I think a case can be made that in the last fifty years civilization increasingly gained the upper hand.

But these are minor quibbles that in no way detract from the overall value of this book. It is an erudite, literate, and comprehensive treatment of some very complex historical developments. It is a monumental achievement.