Volume 52, Number 17 · November 3, 2005
After the Fall
By Alan Ryan
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
by Tony Judt
Penguin, 878 pp., $39.95
Writing a comprehensive, intellectually serious account of the history of Europe between the closing days of World War II and the early weeks of 2005 is on the face of it impossible—certainly for one writer and within the compass of one book. There is the war and its aftermath; the origins of the cold war; the retreat from empire by Britain, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Belgium, and Portugal; the creation and the fits-and-starts development of the Common Market; the achievement of prosperity and the unexpected discontents that it provoked, culminating in the strange year of 1968; the brutal installation, long reign, and sudden downfall of communism in the Soviet bloc; the recent horrors in the Balkans; and the present reality of a Europe that increasingly resembles a comfortable island beset by refugees, illegal migrant workers, and the allies of al-Qaeda. And it would hardly be possible to omit the daily lives of the citizenry of thirty-odd countries, as reflected in their sports, music, movies, and other cultural attachments.
Review, 4795 words
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