Europe: A History is a narrative history book by Norman Davies

Norman Davies

Professor Ivor Norman Richard Davies FBA, FRHistS is a leading English historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland, and the United Kingdom.- Academic career :...

.

As Davies notes in the Preface, the book contains little that is original. Primary research was
rarely required. Twelve chapters span the European past from prehistory

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

 till the disintegration
of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. The chapters contain almost three hundred so-called capsules, texts
describing separate terms that often exceeds the specific time frame (e.g. Coward, Hatred, Loot or Vorkuta

Vorkuta

Vorkuta is a coal-mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin at the Usa River. Population: - Labor camp origins :...

). In the middle part, Davies tries to avoid what he calls the bias of Western Civilization (= neglect of eastern Europe), in the 20th century part he fights the Allied scheme of history. Davies notes at the end of the preface the book is "only one from an almost infinite number of histories of Europe that could be written" and that his work is "the view of one pair of eyes".

• Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. ISBN 0-19-820171-0
• Europe: A History. New York: HarperCollins 1998, corrected edition. ISBN 0-06-097468-0

External links

• Review of Europe: A History by Anne Applebaum
  Anne Applebaum
  Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is a journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She has been an editor at The Economist, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post...