The Complete Idiot's Guide to European History

by Nathan Barber

•Fascinating, fact-filled writing that delivers hundreds of years in the life of the European continent
•Terrific supplementary reading for AP History students

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Reference

464 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

A twenty-year educator, Nathan Barber has served in a number of roles including teacher, coach and administrator. As a writer, Barber has produced several classroom guides for teachers and much online content for test-prep companies. Barber also has written and published thirteen books, mostly in the field of education. His most recent project, an innovative new book for teachers from Routledge/Eye on Education, is called What Teachers Can Learn from Sports Coaches: A Playbook of Instructional Strategies. It is available now on Kindle, and print versions will be available August 27, 2014.

Nathan Barber's online presence can be seen in a number of places including his blog, The Next Generation of Educational Leadership, on Facebook at facebook.com/nathan.barber.author, on Twitter at @_nathanbarber, and at nathanbarber.com.

Reviews

[Yasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got it for my AP Euro class and ended up liking it so much I didn't sell it. Easy to understand, a decent amount of detail, and good information. Would suggest this to someone who just wanted to brush up on random parts of history.

[Horia Bura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good and well written synthesis of the history of Europe, addressed to the passionates of history, less to the specialists. The author manages to compensate the narrative loaded with information through small jokes or even ironies, most of them funny, showing that history can be written in a relaxed, fun style (without being superficial), so that the reading is both pleasant and useful.

Unfortunately, as a Romanian, I can not repress a sense of disappointment about my country's almost nonexistence for an American professor of history, who mentions Romania in just 3-4 places, except for the 1989 Revolution, the other mentions being strictly tangential to other topics. I do not suffer from the "small history" complex and I acknowledge the primordial role of Western countries in the history of the old continent, but almost all of this kind of synthesis, belonging to a Western author, sin through a flagrant disproportion between the space in the book allocated to the West, as opposed to that of the East. But this must be the fate of the peripheral peoples from a civilizational point of view, and we have to come to terms with this reality...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess I am an idiot because I read this totally enjoyable read. I wanted a good review of European history in order to make sense of all that is going on today. I always wondered how all of the current European countries evolved from the feudal times to the current map.
It has some hokey titles and chapter headings so as to keep the passive reader interested. These are silly but easily ignored for one looking for a good easily digested overview of European history.

[Richard Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because my high school didn’t offer AP European History and, as a result, I felt like I was missing a key piece of my education. A week later, I feel like I’ve just read a bunch of AP student essays...which is to say that the writing leaves much to be desired. On the other hand, I covered the history of Europe from the Bubonic Plague to the Berlin Wall in a week. Hard to beat that!

[Anma Natsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ambitious undertaking, which might have been better served split into two books. Trying to cover so much history resulted in a lot of details being glossed over. It's also jumps around a bit resulting in it being confusing to follow at times. Also desperately needed maps and illustrations! Still I learned some new things from it.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives an extensive overview of European history and is a great guide to use to study for a class or for anyone interested in history. You get a lot from it even if you just randomly flip through it and read the various sections. I like the overview it gives of the the progression and role of religion in the European countries. The subtitles in the sections are humorous and candid, like: "The naughty Netherlands," "The Worms diet and its undesired results," "Might makes might right, right?," and "The society of Jesus--no girls allowed." A book like this should be a required book in junior high or high school so that students can get an overview of the history of other countries in a short amount of time--spend a week reading this book and you will learn a semester's or a year's worth of knowledge.

This book was received through Goodreads First Read.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if there is an insult worse than Complete Idiot, but maybe that's the version of the book I need. It was a decent book, but I had the same problem with this that I had with other European History books; namely, that all the kings and wars seem to blend together and it's hard to keep them straight. But this was good for answering some basic history questions that I had from our trip to Europe.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently finished reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to European History. The book was good and helped me get a very high-level view of the history of Europe from 1337 up until 2010. I recommend it. Its blatant weakness is the lack of images or maps to help the subject matter sink in.

In any case, here is a summary that I wrote after reading the book. It is very much inspired by it.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I took my time with it and found myself doing additional internet searches on the information covered in it. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about European history. I think it would be helpful to anyone studying the subject, as well.

Thank you very much to Goodreads Giveaways for this great book!

[♡ Lisa - Can't talk, reading... ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great source of information. I learned a lot from this book and like it's casual but informative tone. However, I'm not a fan of the author's non-inclusive language. Given that this book was published in 2011, I'm surprised and disappointed that the author continuously refers to 'man', 'mankind','Frenchmen' etc.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a great job of filling in all the blanks that were left by my schools' poor history programs. A real eye-opener for me as to the influence of The Church in Europe during this time period.

My only complaint was a lack of sufficient maps, which would have helped my understanding a lot.

[Bert Hesselink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spot on!

Great short history about Europe. Very accurate. Impressive how to put so much information into such a short book. Every European citizen shall read it to truly appreciate what an amazing continent Europe really is.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was pretty helpful as an overview for my European History class. Plus I'm an idiot...

[Shishir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent synopsis of various changes from 1300 - today (2011) Covered middle ages, new world, revolutions (political religious scientific Agricultural ) enlightenment rivalries wars …

[Tao Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great background for an AP class