Some of you may have seen the comments I made on this board these past two weeks about how good this book was and how I'd write a rave review when I was finished. I'm finished now, I am writing a review, and it is a great book, but I can't write a rave review.

This is a doorstopper of a book, even in paperback version: at over eight hundred pages, in a rather small font, it takes quite a while to get through. And no wonder, considering the ambitious premise of the book: a complete history of Europe from 1945 until the time of its writing (2005). The author, Tony Judt, is a British-born historian who has spent most of his career in the US (New York), so could be argued to be well-placed to write such a book. And indeed, I don't imagine there are many people who could've done a better job. As a whole, the book is a major achievement, and highly recommended both to Europeans and to others. But it's inevitable that there will be stronger and weaker chapters or passages.

As one might expect from the title, Judt sees the sixty years covered in his book, and particularly the forty-five from the end of World War 2 to the end of the Cold War, as a long epilogue to World War 2, or more accurately to the "thirty years war", the succession of World Wars 1 and 2. Nearly everything is seen through the lens of how it relates to or was influenced by the memories of those two wars - and for good reason. The book is structured in what seems a rather sensible manner - largely chronological, and within each time period per theme, and when applicable per country.

On the whole I was rather more impressed by the parts dealing with the earlier years than the ones dealing with later years, but I can think of several reasons for that besides an actual difference in quality: my increased familiarity with the later years and hence greater inclination to criticize Judt's descriptions or interpretations; Judt's own more biased impressions of the years he lived in as an adult; and quite simply the factor of not enough time having passed to judge the later years in quite the same dispassionate fashion.

That said, on the whole Judt is impressively good at being dispassionate. His personal left-wing inclinations are only rarely on display, and he has no problem with placing blame wherever blame is due. There is only a handful of moments when the dispassionate tone is lost and emotion or scorn is shown openly - but those moments are very odd ones. The most emotional passage in the book is probably the one in which Judt rants against particular styles of seventies architecture, with the Paris neighbourhood of La Défense singled out for particular loathing. The other notable targets of Judt's ire, perhaps even more randomly, are the Eurovision Song Contest and David Beckham.

Judt describes every major and many less major European countries in significant detail for at least some time periods, and of course very few readers will be sufficiently knowledgeable to offer substantial critiques of his dealing with all or even most of those countries. I for one certainly could not claim to be in a position to give a balanced evaluation of his dealings with any country other than my own, Belgium. Which is dealt with briefly on a number of occasions, and more extensively in one passage. That passage really did not impress me, I must say; a number of things were misinterpretations or even wrong facts, but the worst was simply the significant exaggeration. Judt's book was published in 2005, two years before what most observers see as the start of Belgium's government crisis that lasts to this day. One could try to claim that he was simply being prophetic in his description of Belgian politics, I suppose; but as a description of the situation prior to and at the time the book was written, the passage is really quite overdramatic and exaggerated.

Of course my critique of Judt's treatment of Belgium won't be of much interest to most people here, but I briefly mentioned it to explain why, having read it, I started wondering how much I could rely on Judt in his descriptions of other countries, and whether he did not have comparable minor mistakes and major exaggerations there as well. His take on the country of his birth, the United Kingdom, was disappointing to me for a different reason. I for one did not notice anything wrong in it (of course British readers may disagree), but it struck me as uninspired and containing little that was new or original.

For foreigners and the large majority of Europeans both, this book will be an eye-opener in many ways, containing many unknown facts and sharp analyses. I regret to say not too many of those are positive; Judt does give credit where credit is due, but with the European popular memory of its own history being what it is, it's perhaps not surprising that many of the new elements that Judt brings to the fore do not reflect altogether positively on the countries of Europe. Though that said, American or other foreign critics of Europe may also find this book helpful in that it explains and, when possible, justifies some things they like to criticize.

So regardless of whether you live in Europe or outside it, whether you like Europe - or the EU - or dislike it, if you're at all interested in modern history you will find this book well worth your time, and find food for thought in it, even if it has, inevitably, some flaws.