Europe Recast: A History of European Union

by Desmond Dinan

Has some blue highlighting inside it, but the cover and pages are in great condition otherwise.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

370 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2004

Reviews

[OutboardCap · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good layman's entry point into the history of the EU and its predecessor organizations, although sometimes you will need to look something up to stay on track.

Dinan does an outstanding job of charting through many of the EU history's important moments and developments and beautifully explains how European integration has worked since the 1940s.

While the book is covers a fair amount of material, I wish the author would reiterate some of the concepts when they come up again, as it becomes easy to get lost in all the acronyms and policy organs named European "blablabla".

That said, this was a good book, and I recommend it to anyone, especially those outside Europe, who needs a relatively short but expansive history of the development of the EU from 1945-2005.

[Andreas Haraldstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

An expansive book on the history of the EU, from its early beginnings in the 1950s in the form of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) until the Eurozone Crisis (the second edition of this book is from 2014). Through ten chapters, Dinan goes into great detail on every major event, reform, treaty and individual playing a part in the development of European integration. This focus is in accordance with one of Dinan’s theses, which is that rather than idealism and deeper structures, european integration and the sui generis form it took (ECSC, EC, EU) was the result of concrete and pragmatic solutions to concrete problems and events. Thus individuals such as Monet, Schuman, de Gaulle, Hallstein, Delors, Merkel, Sarkozy, van Rompuy, concrete meetings, treaties and events become important. This approach colors the book, which, though informative (I learned a lot), also almost comically reflects the layman view of both the EU and of history as «just one damned thing after another». When reading this book, you need to be prepared for an onslaught of persons, dates, meetings, treaties, institutions, acronyms etc. This reflects the history of EU as a complex set of institutions and treaties, created in layers over time, reflecting the needs of the times and complex interactions and negotiations between multiple interests.

All in all, this is a very informative book. Dinan gives a solid overview of the history of European integration. However, the book is dry and at times overwhelming and I envision that taking notes, deliberate memorization as well as reading multiple books about the same topic would be necessary to really get a solid grasp on EU history. This, however, is a good start.

[Susana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ha sido el eje de la asignatura 'International Relations and European Integration since World War II'. Hacía tiempo que no estudiaba tan a gusto.
Una buena síntesis de la Historia de la Unión Europea, muy completa y amena.
Es increíble cómo Dinan ha conseguido no resultar una lata.
Al tratarse de un libro de Historia hay líneas rojas, por supuesto; pero ha conseguido tener una actitud crítica sin perder la ilusión de objetividad propia del género.
Recomendable 100%.

[Zement · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessant, maar bij momenten erg saai - de opeenvolging van conferenties en toppen die al dan niet geratificeerd worden is eindeloos en wordt vaak te weinig in detail belicht. Ook weegt het illustratiemateriaal te licht: een paar eenvoudige kaartjes van Europa als er landen toetreden, en nog geen handvol foto's. Dat had veel beter aan aanschouwelijker gekund. Niettemin dus wel boeiend ook: een erg leerzaam boek.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how he did it, but Dinan somehow overcame my natural inability to process any information related to crazy abbreviations with this informative and engaging history of European cooperation.