The Pursuit of Power

Highly impressive ... chronicles a turbulent and confusing century with wonderful clarity and verve ... transnational history at its finest ... more complete but also much more fascinating than most histories of the period -- Gerard Degroot * The Times * Splendid ... a traditional framework, perhaps, but one whose enduring value is confirmed by Evans's fine scholarship -- David Bell * Financial Times * Dazzlingly erudite and entertaining ... He brings together an almost impossibly vast range of material (bear-hunting in Hungary, trade unions in Dorset, the wars of Italian unification) in a sweeping narrative underpinned by a persuasive central theme ... he handles his immense body of material with enviable subtlety and skill. -- Dominic Sandbrook * The Sunday Times * This is a scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar. The canvas is vast and so much is now known about the period, thanks to a profusion of historical writing, that giving shape to the material must have been a daunting task. Yet Evans has risen to the challenge splendidly. The Pursuit of Power mixes political, social, economic, cultural and intellectual history to give a richness of texture and presence that the existing major accounts of the century - many of them written at a time when high politics, great men and balance-of-power diplomacy were what counted as history - were unable to deliver. To achieve that blend and yet retain coherence marks this volume as a veritable tour de force... for anyone who wants to discover just how entangled Europe's history is, there can be no better starting point than The Pursuit of Power. -- Richard Overy * New Statesman *