The Pursuit of Power

Highly impressive ... chronicles a turbulent and confusing century with wonderful clarity and verve ... transnational history at its finest ... more complete but also much more fascinating than most histories of the period

Gerard Degroot, The Times

Splendid ... a traditional framework, perhaps, but one whose enduring value is confirmed by Evans's fine scholarship

David Bell, Financial Times

Dazzlingly erudite and entertaining ... He brings together an almost impossibly vast range of material (bear-hunting in Hungary, trade unions in Dorset, the wars of Italian unification) in a sweeping narrative underpinned by a persuasive central theme ... he handles his immense body of material with enviable subtlety and skill.

Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times

This is a scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar. The canvas is vast and so much is now known about the period, thanks to a profusion of historical writing, that giving shape to the material must have been a daunting task. Yet Evans has risen to the challenge splendidly. The Pursuit of Power mixes political, social, economic, cultural and intellectual history to give a richness of texture and presence that the existing major accounts of the century - many of them written at a time when high politics, great men and balance-of-power diplomacy were what counted as history - were unable to deliver. To achieve that blend and yet retain coherence marks this volume as a veritable tour de force... for anyone who wants to discover just how entangled Europe's history is, there can be no better starting point than The Pursuit of Power.

Richard Overy, New Statesman