An Intellectual History Of Modern Europe

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities.

With the unifying theme of the Enlightenment tradition and two introductory chapters on the evolution of Western intellectual tradition, the text provides students with the framework and background they need to understand the history of modern European thought. The nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries are examined in relation to the Enlightenment.

One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture course on European intellectual history that drew scores of students over many years. His lectures—lucid, accessible, beautifully written, and delivered with a notable lack of jargon—distilled modern European history from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and leading figures. Richard A. Lofthouse, one of Turner’s former students, has now edited the lectures into a single volume that outlines the thoughts of a great historian on the forging of modern European ideas. Moreover, it offers a fine example of how intellectual history should be taught: rooted firmly in historical and biographical evidence.

What History Tells presents an impressive collection of critical papers from the September 2001 conference "An Historian’s Legacy: George L. Mosse and Recent Research on Fascism, Society, and Culture." This book examines his historiographical legacy first within the context of his own life and the internal development of his work, and secondly by tracing the many ways in which Mosse influenced the subsequent study of contemporary history, European cultural history and modern Jewish history. The contributors include Walter Laqueur, David Sabean, Johann Sommerville, Emilio Gentile, Roger Griffin, Saul Friedländer, Jay Winter, Rudy Koshar, Robert Nye, Janna Bourke, Shulamit Volkov, and Steven E. Aschheim.

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities.

Elegant and accessible, this book is a powerful and imaginative exploration of themes in the history of European ideas.

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world. Democracy in Modern Europe surveys the conceptual history of democracy in modern Europe, from the Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth century through both world wars and the rise of welfare states to the present era of the European Union. Exploring individual countries as well as regional dynamics, this volume comprises a tightly organized, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date exploration of a foundational issue in European political and intellectual history.

Highlighting the most important events, ideas, and individuals that shaped modern Europe, A Concise History of Modern Europe provides a readable, succinct history of the continent from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to the present day. Avoiding a detailed, lengthy chronology, the book focuses on key events and ideas to explore the causes and consequences of revolutions—be they political, economic, or scientific; the origins and development of human rights and democracy; and issues of European identity. Any reader needing a broad overview of the sweep of European history since 1789 will find this book, published in a first edition under the title Revolutionary Europe, an engaging and cohesive narrative.

From the monarchical terror of the Middle Ages to the mangled Europe of the twenty-first century, A People's History of Modern Europe tracks the history of the continent through the deeds of those whom mainstream history tries to forget. Europe provided the perfect conditions for a great number of political revolutions from below. The German peasant wars of Thomas Muntzer, the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century, the rise of the industrial worker in England, the turbulent journey of the Russian Soviets, the role of the European working class throughout the Cold War, student protests in 1968 and through to the present day, when we continue to fight to forge an alternative to the barbaric economic system. With sections focusing on the role of women, this history sweeps away the tired platitudes of the privileged upon which our current understanding is based, and provides an opportunity to see our history differently.