"This excellent book about Europe in the era of the world wars has many virtues. The questions that drive it are, indeed, the central ones for twentieth-century European history. Among the many books on this subject that have appeared around the millennium, I know of no other that conveys the key problems so well and so concisely."--Eric Weitz, University of Minnesota, author of A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation"Volker Berghahn has written a concise and tightly argued interpretation of European history in the first half of the twentieth century. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is ambitious and original, and is particularly strong in seeing Europe not as self-contained, but situating its development in terms of both colonialism and America."--Mary Nolan, New York University, author of Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany