Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century

Mark Mazower's Dark Continent is a beautifully written study of European liberalism and its enemies, and about the ways in which the latter, but for a few historical twists, might just have won. It is not a conventional European history textbook, but rather a long historical essay in the best British tradition, at times speculative but always crisp, analytical and engaging. There are four themes that Mazower weaves through the various chapters, stretching from the crisis of democracy in the interwar period to the crisis of the state after communism.

First is the argument that ideas matter in European history. There are more than a few books that spend a great deal of time on the economic challenges of the welfare state and the rivalry between statist and non-- statist solutions to economic problems, and interpret European history accordingly....