{"id":266,"date":"2021-12-05T21:37:55","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T21:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/?p=266"},"modified":"2024-10-12T16:27:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T23:27:04","slug":"book-review-the-shortest-history-of-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/2021\/12\/05\/book-review-the-shortest-history-of-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Shortest History of Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The author of this book is a professor in Australia 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 &#8211; but it works!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=commonsensevi-20&amp;language=en_US&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=1760640425&amp;asins=1760640425&amp;linkId=edede82c9f2e751a2a223b1e479f083f&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><em>(This is an affiliate marketing link. If a purchase is made, I may receive a sales commission at no cost to you.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;s Christian Church, which interestingly, worked to preserve Greek and Roman learning. Each of these, in turn, led to other fundamental changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"599\" height=\"368\" src=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Capture.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Capture.jpg 599w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Capture-300x184.jpg 300w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Capture-98x60.jpg 98w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The key is how he has focused on major thematic elements of European history. In a way, his book is similar to James Burke&#8217;s <em>The Day the Universe Changed<\/em> approach to connecting together important elements of global history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author John Hirst writes a unique history of Europe that gives a quick overview followed by a dive into themes that link elements of the arc of history together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}