"This is a fascinating and best selling account, in which John Roberts explores the contrasts and contradictions between a socially creative and politically destructive Europe. Europe 1880-1845" integrates social, economic and cultural history within a framework of political narrative. The work examines how, in this 65 year time period, Europe's political and economic domination of the globe came to a climax and then crumbled. It explores how Europe's internal divisions and failure to solve her own problems brought her twice to the brink of self-destruction and how European quarrels detonated the two World Wars and the struggle to dominate Europe dictated the course of both. Readers interested in European history. Hardcover 0-582-35746-2 79.95y