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Rating: 
Summary: A Comprehensive study of Europe since 1815
Review: Detailed Information should be provided taking the base year as 1815.Political boundaries should be drawn on the basis of langauge spoken taking a village/town as a unit.Detailed maps should also be available on display for review.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Ancillary Text for AP Modern European History
Review: I am writing this review to call this book (and its companion, The Penguin Atlas of Modern History by the same author) to the attention of all the teachers and students of Advanced Placement Modern European History. Its conciseness, the entertaining nature of its narrative, and the lucidity of its well-conceived maps make it a wonderful supplement for whatever textbook you use for teaching and learning this subject matter. It can be used effectively throughout the year to make the bewildering detail of the successive epochs of European development more understandable by its clear pinpointing of the strategic objectives the various European states were aiming at. Its discussions are also so compact that they make excellent reviews before tests -- and before the big exam at the end of the year, especially. I can't recommend another work available in this field more highly. Criticism of the military and political emphases of McEvedy's narrative seem beside the point as these were instrumental in acquiring wealth and were, whether we like it or not, the basis of policy decisions for all European rulers. The introduction to this volume is particularly valuable as it challenges the universally accepted notion that Scientific and Industrial Revolutions occurred within an encapsulated time periods as a result of immediate causative factors. Here, McEvedy clearly states that the advantages European states enjoyed were not military, but cultural and administrative. These advantages were accumulated gradually. McEvedy's military/political emphasis is merely the result of his recognition that the acquisition of financial power is the objective of the modern state and that history is the resulting record of the means that shaped these ends. Lastly, one reason I find this work so useful because it is written by a British author with all the advantages that perspective entails for a view of Eurocentric history. Use this work for your APMEH courses!
Rating: 
Summary: Brief and Limited in Scope, but Well Presented
Review: Perhaps a better title for this book would have been: The Penguin Atlas of Recent Mostly Military History: Europe 1815 to 1980. Much attention is given to military campaigns and political boundaries, but little is said of the populations within the borders, except when they are reduced to population figures. Since the book was published in 1982 and not updated since, you won't find any discussion of the important changes in the past two decades.The writing style is usually engaging, although the author has the irritating tendency to view nations' developments as a contest to attain the greatest levels of population and industrial production.
Rating:
Summary: Brief and Limited in Scope, but Well Presented
Review: Perhaps a better title for this book would have been: The Penguin Atlas of Recent Mostly Military History: Europe 1815 to 1980. Much attention is given to military campaigns and political boundaries, but little is said of the populations within the borders, except when they are reduced to population figures. Since the book was published in 1982 and not updated since, you won't find any discussion of the important changes in the past two decades. The writing style is usually engaging, although the author has the irritating tendency to view nations' developments as a contest to attain the greatest levels of population and industrial production.
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