A work of great erudition and bien pensant orthodoxy that treats the sociopolitical history of Europe from 1945 to 2005, from the Cold War to the near-term aftermath. The author’s best work is in describing the damage wrought by World War II, the brutality of the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe, and the cultural consequences of Western Europe’s economic growth. Micro studies of nation states like Spain also are valuable. But Judt does not grasp the central conflict between democracy and totalitarianism and so presents the Soviet collapse as compelled by economics and driven by Gorbachev, rather than fueled by the thirst for liberty. So too is the dynamic of Thatcherism dismissed as ‘little more than state selloffs’. (Still more remarkable is the omission of Reagan’s ‘Tear down this wall’ speech.) Judt concludes not with the European leadership’s failure to prevent Balkan war and genocide but yet another review of Nazism’s Final Solution and its historical uniqueness; the Soviets get a pass. Ultimately an unoriginal book.