Reviews

Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century by Κώστας Κουρεμένος, Mark Mazower

thehistoryreader's review

medium-paced

4.0

brynhammond's review

4.0

Riveting up to and including World War Two; after that a much more ordinary history, and its epilogue on Europe today – in 1998 – reads sadly now. An absolute five stars for the first half of the century, presented as a struggle between three ideologies: liberal democracy, fascism, communism – without the sense of ‘inevitable victory’ for the first. He wants to get away from liberal democracy’s complacency about its natural place in Europe. I could have read nothing better to come to terms with the fact that fascism is again popular, and liberal democracy, not for the first time, shaky.