Includes bibliographical references and index.

Medieval legacies and transforming discoveries -- The Renaissance -- The two reformations -- The wars of religion -- The rise of the Atlantic economy : Spain and England -- England and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century -- The age of absolutism, 1650-1720 -- The new philosophy of science -- Enlightened thought and the republic of letters -- Eighteenth-century economic and social change -- Eighteenth-century dynastic rivalries and politics -- The French revolution -- Napoleon and Europe -- The industrial revolution -- Liberal challenges to Restoration Europe -- The revolutions of 1848 -- The era of national unification -- The dominant powers in the age of liberalism : parliamentary Britain, Tsarist Russia, and Republican France -- Rapid industrialization and its challenges, 1870-1914 -- Political and cultural responses to a rapidly changing world -- The age of European imperialism -- The Great War -- Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union -- The elusive search for stability in the 1920s -- The Europe of economic depression and dictatorship -- World War II -- Rebuilding divided Europe -- The Cold War and the end of European empires -- Transitions to democracy and the collapse of communism -- Global challenges : "fortress Europe," European cooperation, and the uncertainties of a new age.