Review: A Short History of Europe (by Simon Jenkins)

This book was  gift, and one I was very interested to read. How did it do, covering the history of a continent within just 300 pages?

Very well, in short.

There are some obvious drawbacks. By necessity, such an undertaking has to skimp on details, but this is compensated for by placing in a broader context various events and adding depth through this method rather than by a closer focus.

There are some minor errors or areas of contention (such as describing Aachen as Charlemagne’s capital) but these do not alter the meaning or fundamentally change anything. 

As might be expected due to both proximity and the greater amount of information available there is more page space devoted to more recent events while those of the dim past are quickly covered. By page 100 (a third in) we’re already up to the Renaissance. Much the contents were familiar to me, but quite a lot was new, and the writing style made the history effortless to read and (as happens occasionally) I did deliberately slow down so as to not just blast through it. 

Necessarily, modern politics is contentious and the book (published four years ago) includes the ever so slightly polarising topic of the UK leaving the EU. I was pleased to find the author took what I found to be an objective stance on this, raising both the advantages and disadvantages of how Europe sought to cope after WWII, and the great problem (as I also see it) of a lack of democratic consensus which needs addressing one way or another.

The nature of the beast is such that the pace must be swift and the historical events covered in broad strokes but I nevertheless found it a highly engaging book and well worth reading.

 

Thaddeus