Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica.
Fascinating, informative, sometimes exhilarating, often painful, and quite impossible to summarise... This is a splendidly panoramic picture of our common European home, a book to read through and then to dip into frequently... I thoroughly recommend his book
A broader travelling history of the whole of Europe's 20th century. As befits a journalist with an eye for bad news, he also has much more to say on its calamitous first half than on its more successful second half... Mr Mak tells this part of the story vividly and in great, gory detail, moving from grim fields of battle (Verdun, Stalingrad) to places of revolution (Petrograd, Berlin), and on to ghastly charnel-houses of death and destruction (Auschwitz, Dresden)
An ingenious geographical-chronological structure... It's impossible not to get drawn into this book
The pace rarely slackens and every page sparkles with insight
In Europe is not so much a work of history, nor is it strictly a travelogue of the present; it is part of a growing genre that is sometimes referred to as the 'history of the present', but might just as well be the 'presence of the past'. It is undoubtedly a spectacular and beautifully crafted piece of such writing
Geert Mak is a journalist and historian, and is one of Holland's bestselling writers. His books include
Amsterdam, In Europe and
Jorwerd.