"Narrow View of Europe History Ignores the Significant -- and the U.S"

   This is the third, and last, volume in series on the history of Europe since 1450. As in the authors' earlier volumes, the text centers on Europe, takes occasional glances at the wider world, is factually accurate and is largely political.

   The scholarship is up-to-date -- an over-emphasized virtue today when scholarship so frequently means little more than a shift from yesterday's version back to that of the day before yesterday. In this version, once again the Germans are blamed for 1914, the Treaty of Versailles is treated leniently, and British appeasement in the 1930s is regarded as weak and misguided.

   THE GENERAL TONE is “English traditional.” Coverage is narrowly political, having only a single chapter on "Europe and the World Economy," one chapter each on Asia and Africa, and one on The Cultural Revolution." None of the four has anything very enlightening to say: descriptive of surface events, they ignore the significant changes.

   Three of the 15 chapters are on Russia. These give a fairly adequate history of that area and may be justified by its importance to Europe. Surely the United States is equally important to the world. But there is no chapter on our own country.
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Professor of history at Georgetown University, Carroll Quigley’s most recent book was “Tragedy and Hope: The World in Our Time.”