Dark Continent : Europe's Twentieth Century

Rating:
Summary: Like reading a box of 3x5 cards
Review: Well, duh, how brilliant do you have to be to realize that the 20th century wasn't all about the triumphal flowering of democracy?

The first half of Dark Continent reads like an insecure graduate student's box of 3x5 cards. Endless quotations of no particular insight from names that might impress me if I knew who they were. The final quarter has the same level of penetrating thought as a couple of months of the Economist - and reads much the same.

Evidently your previous reviewers had more patience or perception than I; and the guru reviewers on the covers couldn't contain their enthusiasm.

Thumbs down because this book doesn't reveal anything much, and cloaks it in the appearance of great relevatory scholarship.