European General category: 8233 books

Cavour was perhaps the key figure in the process of Italian unification. As prime minister of Piedmont, still reeling from military humiliation by Austria, he turned his backward and insignificant home state into the nucleus of the new Italy by his astute manipulation of the European great powers,...

The fascinating history of a Baltic empire’s dominance and decline—excerpted from internationally bestselling author Norman Davies’s Vanished Kingdoms Vanished Kingdoms introduces readers to once-powerful European empires that have left scant traces on the modern map. In this excerpt...

David Kaiser began his serious study of history as a Harvard undergraduate in the fall of 1965 and began his professional career as a junior faculty member in 1976.  During the next 37 years, he taught dozens of courses, wrote seven books, changed the lives of many students, and carefully observed...

It is believed that the Black Death started in China. It then reached rat fleas on merchant ships and was spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed anywhere from 30-60 percent of the European population. It took nearly 2 centuries for Europes population...

Although present-day Ukraine has only been in existence for something over two decades, its recorded history reaches much further back for more than a thousand years to Kyivan Rus’. Over that time, it has usually been under control of invaders like the Turks and Tatars, or neighbors like Russia...

The construction of the European Community (EC) has widely been understood as the product of either economic self-interest or dissatisfaction with the nation-state system. In Europe United, Sebastian Rosato challenges these conventional explanations, arguing that the Community came into being because...

In the twelfth century, the Catholic Church attempted a thoroughgoing reform of marriage and sexual behavior aimed at eradicating sexual desire from Christian lives. Seeking a refuge from the very serious condemnations of the Church and relying on a courtly culture that was already preoccupied with...

The Thirty Years War (1618-48) was the most destructive European conflict prior to the twentieth century. It reduced the population of central Europe by around a quarter and left thousands of towns and villages in ruins. This uniquely comprehensive collection of translated documents covers all aspects...

At its height, the Carolingian empire spanned a million square kilometres of western Europe - from the English Channel to central Italy and northern Spain, and from the Atlantic to the fringes of modern Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. As the largest political unit for centuries, the empire...

The European Middle Ages have long attracted popular interest as an era characterised by violence, whether a reflection of societal brutality and lawlessness or part of a romantic vision of chivalry. Violence in Medieval Europe engages with current scholarly debate about the degree to which medieval...

The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740-1815 examines a key development in modern European history: the origins and emergence of a competitive state system. H.M. Scott demonstrates how the well-known and dramatic events of these decades - the emergence of Russia and Prussia; the three partitions...

Celebrated historian John Hirst offers a fascinating exploration of the qualities that made Europe a world-changing civilisation.The Shortest History of Europe begins with a rapid overview of European civilisation, describing its birth from an unlikely mixture of classical learning, Christianity and...

The fascinating six-hundred-year history of one of the world's most coveted gems and the royal feuds, intrigues, and betrayals it engendered The Sancy Diamond first came to Europe from India in the fourteenth century, and until 1661 it was the largest white diamond-and the most concentrated...

Tracking Europe is a bold interdisciplinary critique of claims regarding the free movement of goods, people, services, and capital throughout Europe. Ginette Verstraete interrogates European discourses on unlimited movement for everyone and a utopian unity-in-diversity in light of contemporary social...