bAn iEconomist iBest Book of the Year pSweeping . . . an ambitious synthesis . . . Evans writes with admirable narrative power and possesses a wonderful eye for local color . . . Fascinating.--Stephen Schuker, iThe Wall Street JournalbribrFrom the bestselling author of iThe Third Reich at War, a imasterly account of Europe in the age of its global hegemony the latest volume in the Penguin History of Europe seriesbr bbr Richard J. Evans, bestselling historian of Nazi Germany, returns with a monumental new addition to the acclaimed Penguin History of Europe series, covering the period from the fall of Napoleon to the outbreak of World War I. Evans's gripping narrative ranges across a century of social and national conflicts, from the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 to the unification of both Germany and Italy, from the Russo-Turkish wars to the Balkan upheavals that brought this era of relative peace and growing prosperity to an end. Among the great themes it discusses are the decline of r