With this latest contribution to Palgrave's excellent series on “Gender and History,” Ann Taylor Allen has provided a much needed, fresh analysis of women's experiences in twentieth-century Europe. Lest the reader fear that this slim volume is just a synthesis of pre-existing literature on European women's history, Allen makes her unique approach clear from the first page: this history of European women includes all of Europe (p. 1). Without downplaying the importance of the “great powers,” Allen subtly expresses and, in some cases, redefines, the ways in which women transformed and were transformed by a century of major and minor political and social changes in all European countries. In nine concise chapters that begin with the First World War, move through authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, social revolutions, and end with “Emancipation as Myth and Reality,” Allen offers a broad audience an invaluable tool for rethinking not only the history of women in Europe but also the history of twentieth-century Europe in general.

Allen's overriding theme is that “progress” for women was not a series of easy or even clear triumphs for women. Rather, policies regarding women throughout twentieth-century Europe came about in the context of multiple social and political tensions. In the daunting task of writing a comprehensive overview of modern Europe that addresses gender history, Taylor has demonstrated the necessity of not just inserting women into a larger narrative, but rather rewriting the narrative to evaluate previously held historiographical assumptions. For example, legal victories for women, although often well intentioned, also came about for pragmatic reasons, be it the desire of a secularized Soviet Union to weaken the power of the Russian Orthodox Church (p. 44) or attempts of women to deflect right-wing ire away from themselves onto other groups—such as the case in discussions of limited university space in Hungary after the First World War (p. 50). Likewise, an increase in organized women's movements throughout Europe correlated with a rising number of women's demands that did not fit into one single history of women. Taylor's examples here are well chosen and exemplary of the range of women's experiences, from the arguments that accompanied the changing objectives of the “take back the night movement” (p. 125) to the struggles lesbians faced in trying to find a voice in groups focused on heterosexual relationships. The chronological and thematic juxtaposition of countries and topics allows for the rare delight in a survey book of discovering something new about women and European history in every chapter.

Other highlights of the book include clear explanations of complicated topics such as communism, eugenics, and even gender. Important actors in European women's history such as Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir receive balanced treatment without overwhelming the reader exposed to these major names for the first time, while at the same time including these figures in an engrossing analysis that will not tire the advanced scholar of European women's history. The suggested reading list at the end of the book will point students to further works on specific subjects, while the detailed index makes the book an easy reference guide for instructors and advanced scholars of women's history. As a classroom text, undergraduates at any level will enjoy the accessible language and format, while graduate student seminars will find the work an intriguing starting point for discussing definitions of gender history. The book is truly a gift for those faculty who have wanted to broaden their discussion of women in Europe to include those countries and movements that often go unnoticed. That this is a book that belongs in any class on women's and gender history goes without saying; it would be a true mark of progress for the field of gender history for instructors of more general courses on modern European history to adopt this book as a key text as well.