John asked for it, John got it: Caveat Lector.

Much like Robert’s excellent History of the World (which I think is a bit better). From the jacket: “For his ability to grasp and communicate the full sweep of the past, Roberts … must rank as the leading historical mind of his generation.” “A monumental work of synthesis … outstanding factual accuracy and solid judgments.” “His gifts of compression and clear exposition are outstanding.”

The first third covers ancient civilization to 1500, the next third from 1500 – 1900, then the 20th c. Emphasis is on the latter part in the first two sections, and on modern history generally, though the treatment of late Roman times to 1500 helped me much better understand that period.

It also gave me a handle on many other fuzzy items – the position of Emperor, relationship between Emperor and Pope, the French Revolution and aftermath, 19th c. French history in general, the confusing German tapestry before unification, how unification came about, and similar for Italy. It also shed light I hadn’t had on the Balkans, Eastern Europe generally, Russia (especially post-Ivans), Byzantium, and the long, complicated decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Intense compression necessarily involves omission, and some things would benefit from more coverage. How Switzerland came about isn’t explained, unless it was so brief I missed it. Germany’s unification is brief but a good synopsis; that of Italy is too brief to be clear. But these are minor quibbles considering the book’s scope. His coverage of European imperialism, its entanglements and effects on other societies and the results, is excellent (and often depressing). Another quibble (or more) – the few maps aren’t great, and they’re often only tangentially related to the narrative (similar for the occasional timeline). Lists of place-names appear which are probably familiar to knowledgeable Europeans, but not to me. More and better maps, closely tied to the text, would be a big improvement. Roberts’ books are so good that Penguin owes them this.

His perspectives on American Independence and growth (tantalizingly brief) are useful antidotes to American mythology and narrow vision. Without ill will, he recognizes the American presidency as the (18th c.) British-like constitutional monarchy it essentially is; he’s sober about the relatively minor grievances used to justify revolution, and (as typically) that a radical elite inflamed opinion towards violence; that Americans would have lost without French and Spanish help (also crediting American generalship, when British blunders are a better explanation); and that the U.S. wouldn’t have expanded westward so quickly without British naval protection. He doesn’t dwell on it, but doesn’t romanticize the ruthless illegitimacy of this expansion, including gross abuse of American Indians and the naked land grab called the Mexican War (with the evils of slavery and the Spanish-American War in the longer list). But America's a sideshow here.

Roberts makes a good case that WWI was never inevitable, but the final lead-up is so compressed it’s a bit misleading. He suggests Russia told Serbia to comply with Austrian demands, Serbia largely did, but Austria’s quick invasion was intended regardless. Russia actually sent Serbia mixed signals, and invasion seems unlikely had Serbia completely complied. Had Russia been as clear as Roberts suggests, war might have been averted. But the world wars have been covered so thoroughly elsewhere that this isn’t a big problem.

Roberts’ focus is political, economic, social and cultural; he provides very little military history. His approach to WWII is similar to WWI, although Hitler’s rise is given very little space while the war itself gets more coverage. He provides another interesting perspective on the US, suggesting Truman’s 1947 decision to contain the USSR by providing aid to Greece and Turkey (reversing traditional American isolationism) “may well be thought the most important [decision] in American diplomacy since the Louisiana Purchase.”

A couple other of many interesting tidbits: both the US and USSR supported the creation of Israel (for Russia this was anti-British rather than pro-Israeli). Of course Russian support was short-lived, and in the 1973 Yom Kippur war it’s thought they provided Egypt with nuclear weapons, prompting American forces to go on worldwide alert, essentially ending the war. I always wondered how David beat Goliath again, when this time Goliath had a large quantity of good Soviet weapons. This explanation is more plausible than the Israeli myths.

What Roberts does best is draw out patterns from a mass of detail and make reasoned judgments about these patterns, and he does it very well. All in all, a rip-roaring ride through the fascinating and often hideous past.
( )

"In spreading revolutionary principles the French often put a rod in the pickle for their own backs."

That is an actual sentence from this book. I have no idea what it means. I have also just passed the third time the author has referred to something from history as being "scotched in the egg". I know what a scotched egg is, I could probably even cook one, but I have no idea what the writer is talking about or why he is so proud of coming up with that phrase that he keeps using it.

I am 2/3s of the way through this book and honestly can think of no reason that I persist other than just stubbornness. At first I just thought that maybe it had been a while since I read a book at this reading level, but that was too generous of me. The author uses weird sentence structures and contrived language in such a way that I have to reread almost every sentence and then analyse it, "is he using a that as a noun or an adjective? What was the verb". Every sentence is a puzzle to be solved. There's a spot in there where I'm not sure, but I think he used "outstanding" as a noun.

Even a few commas in the right places would make things so much easier, but instead he spent all his punctuation money on $10 words. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using words that are specific and add to the meaning of the thought. However, this guy uses words in an almost nonsensical way. My guess is he's just showing off. And I am left thinking "I know what the words mean, I just don't know what they mean the way he wrote them".

This book is definitely a dense read, but I found it worth the time and energy it took to see it through to the end. Roberts did a good job of highlighting the main themes of the history of Europe without getting bogged down in too many details. That said, I think the complaint about this type of book is always going to be the lack of detail about a great many things that the reader might find interesting or important. I'm glad I read this one, but I think it will be a good long while before I pick up a survey type book again. ( )

It must have been a hard task, sitting down to write the history of Europe and keeping it under 700 pages (not including the index). Mr Roberts does a magnificent job; he has produced here an enormously satisfying work that introduces at least all of the principal and most relevant events of the last three or so thousand years, and explains them in a way that makes their importance really stand out.

However, no history ever can be said to be complete, or completely accurate; for instance, in describing the Oil Crisis of the 1970s he states that Russia was almost entirely unaffected by events in the Gulf, whereas from recently revealed Soviet documents one can almost say that the Oil Crisis was the first step in the downfall of the Soviet Empire. That, though, is no reason to abandon this book. ( )

J. M. Roberts, author of a fine one-volume history of the world, offers a careful synthesis of European history from the Stone Age to the collapse of Communism in A History of Europe. His discussion is never very deep, as might be expected in a book that treats the whole of ancient Greek history in a mere 20 pages, but it is astonishingly broad. Roberts hits on almost all of the important points, especially the formation of trade networks, empires, and central governments. Literate and learned, A History of Europe is marred by a lack of notes and bibliography, but it is still serviceable as a survey text.

The New York Times Book Review, Donald Kagan

The appearance of A History of Europe by J. M. Roberts is ... timely and welcome. Roberts is a distinguished historian ... He thus brings to this project the broad knowledge needed to see the history of Europe in comparison with the experience of other cultures, a context in which it can best be understood and evaluated.