Rating: 
Summary: Terrific book!
Review: Well written, thorough and really easy to absorb.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific book!
Review: With "The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945-2002" William Hitchcock has provided a competent if parochial history of Europe since the end of World War II. Hitchcock's primary theme is the ever closer union that Europe has been moving toward under the auspices of the European Union.Covered in this text are essential issues as the Marshall Plan, the division of Germany, and the creation and expansion of Euro-institutions. Hitchcock primarily focuses on the political history of Europe. There's little to be said about "The Struggle for Europe" because it says very little itself. Hitchcock makes no new bold revelations or statements about his subject. Instead, what the book presents is a rehash of what has been written in many other publications. In fact, "The Struggle for Europe" is more notable for what it fails to mention, that is the large effect that the Cold War had on Europe outside of its political divisions. In Hitchcock's Europe, the United States asserted no more force on the continent than some Greek god who occasionally intervenes in the lives of mortals in order to satisfy his own whims. The United States was the single most important player in Europe over the past 60 years. The history of American-Soviet relations and the Cold War was, in many respects, the history of Europe in the second half of the 20th century. What Hitchcock has done here is to remove the United States (and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union) from its central role in post-war European development. This is not a travesty; but, it does weaken Hitchcock's overall assessment of post-war Europe. From a Eurocentric perspective, Hitchcock does provide a very good evaluation of events that were driven mostly by internal European dynamics, such as the French colonial war in Algeria. However, there are so few of these types of events that they do not add enough to the book to keep it from only being an average achievement.
Rating: 
Summary: Europe in a Vacuum
Review: With "The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945-2002" William Hitchcock has provided a competent if parochial history of Europe since the end of World War II. Hitchcock's primary theme is the ever closer union that Europe has been moving toward under the auspices of the European Union. Covered in this text are essential issues as the Marshall Plan, the division of Germany, and the creation and expansion of Euro-institutions. Hitchcock primarily focuses on the political history of Europe. There's little to be said about "The Struggle for Europe" because it says very little itself. Hitchcock makes no new bold revelations or statements about his subject. Instead, what the book presents is a rehash of what has been written in many other publications. In fact, "The Struggle for Europe" is more notable for what it fails to mention, that is the large effect that the Cold War had on Europe outside of its political divisions. In Hitchcock's Europe, the United States asserted no more force on the continent than some Greek god who occasionally intervenes in the lives of mortals in order to satisfy his own whims. The United States was the single most important player in Europe over the past 60 years. The history of American-Soviet relations and the Cold War was, in many respects, the history of Europe in the second half of the 20th century. What Hitchcock has done here is to remove the United States (and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union) from its central role in post-war European development. This is not a travesty; but, it does weaken Hitchcock's overall assessment of post-war Europe. From a Eurocentric perspective, Hitchcock does provide a very good evaluation of events that were driven mostly by internal European dynamics, such as the French colonial war in Algeria. However, there are so few of these types of events that they do not add enough to the book to keep it from only being an average achievement.
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