A new history of the idea of Europe from Ancient Greece to the present

'A magisterial history, written with great panache, that is both enlightening and deeply readable. A true tour de force - Peter Frankopan

What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe, award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before - as the history of an idea, and a collective identity.

Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.

Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.

"Praise for Roderick Beaton's previous book Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation" - -

"The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life" - The Week

"Beaton's new book - judicious, well-researched and commendably up-to-date - deserves to be the standard general history of modern Greece in English for years to come" - Financial Times

"A perceptive analysis of Greece's financial crisis, the embers of which continue to threaten to derail the single currency project of the EU" - Country Life