The Human Tradition in Modern Europe 1750 to the Present (The Human Tradition around the World series)

About this book

This engaging and humanizing text traces the development of Europe since the mid-eighteenth century through the lives of people of the time. Capturing key moments themes and events in the continents turbulent modern past the book explores how ordinary Europeans both shaped their societies and were affected by larger historical processes. By focusing on the lives of individual actors both famous and obscure students can gain a sense for how the well-known revolutions wars and social transformations of the modern era were experienced in private homes work places political forums and on battlefields throughout the region.Fittingly the book opens with the French Revolution and concludes with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Eastern European communism. Throughout the contributors use compelling biographies to examine many of the major events and developments in European history including the age of reaction and revolutions in the early nineteenth century; industrialization; Victorianism; new imperialism; fin de sicle culture; the first and second World Wars; the Russian Revolution; Italian fascism Nazism the Holocaust and decolonization; Americanization; and the 1968 youth revolts.