merryberries 's review for:

The Shortest History of Europe: How Conquest, Culture, and Religion Forged a Continent—A Retelling for Our Times by John Hirst

4.0

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(4/5) I thought this book was engaging and informative, but I will say -- the nature of a book entitled "Shortest History of" anything is that it will inevitably gloss over things, leave things out, and summarize it in a way that would probably cause a fistfight at any gathering of historians of that subject, who are wont to disagree about the minutiae and relative importance of historical events, causes, effects, etc. I think Hirst balanced the length with covering the important details, and I appreciated the way that he categorized things and made things easy to understand from multiple perspectives. Definitely would consider this book a good overview to encourage a reader to delve into specific areas in which they find they're interested.