The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017

I'm beginning to suspect that the best approach to learning history is in these fairly hefty chunks. The entirety of world history is just too big to be written about effectively in a single volume, whereas microscopic histories limited to a single people at a single place or of a single event are just too myopic at first. Kershaw's The Global Age: Europe, 1950-2017 (also called Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017) is the final volume in the nine volumes listed in the Penguin History of Europe Series. This is one of those books which makes you feel smarter than you are, if you know what I mean. Kershaw's approach, in texture and language, reminded me quite a bit of Diarmaid Macculloch's Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years, a book I need to return to and finish. Maybe you have to be in the right headspace, but a detailed knowledge of a subject which continues to play out against our daily lives, affecting us in small and big ways, is a handy thing to have.

Obviously a master of his subject, the author writes well. The book has me thirsting for more.