The author of this book is a professor in Australia and who wanted to create a concise history of Europe that is organized around major themes. A typical history book goes through exhaustive recitation of facts, actions and people. This book is quite a bit different in how it presents large arcs of history – but it works!
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After covering each of these topics, he links together how they influenced each other. For example, the German warrior class lended support to the Roman’s Christian Church, which interestingly, worked to preserve Greek and Roman learning. Each of these, in turn, led to other fundamental changes.
The key is how he has focused on major thematic elements of European history. In a way, his book is similar to James Burke’s The Day the Universe Changed approach to connecting together important elements of global history.
For me, this book gave me a broad brush look at European history. My next steps are to drill down deeper into various historical events, as well as the histories of some specific countries.