Ian Kershaw described his last instalment in the Penguin History of Europe series (To Hell and Back, on 1914 to 1949) as “the hardest book I had ever attempted”. “That was,” he adds in this final volume covering 1950 to the present day, “until this book.” The recent past presents particular challenges for historians, as without the perspective of distance, directions and narratives can be difficult to discern. As Zhou Enlai is supposed to have said of the French Revolution, it's just too early to tell.
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