Truly superb – a magnificent achievement. It is hard to imagine how a better – and more readable – history of the emergence of today’s Europe from the ashes of 1945 could ever be written; I can’t think of another work on the latter half of the 20th century that comes close to matching it. I learnt an immense amount from it, and had unbounded admiration for the way Tony Judt seemed to feel equally at ease with macro-economic comparisons, the bureaucratic niceties of the European Union, the complexities of developments in different East European countries before and after 1989, and the changing cultural scene across the Continent. All in all, a real masterpiece.

This is a book which is not just wholeheartedly to be recommended; it ought to be an obligatory part of the school curriculum across the continent. It is a monumental work, which would make an excellent bookend or doorstop. But please read it first.

Tony Judt is splendidly equipped to write the history of Europe since the second world war… One of Postwar‘s great achievements is to break with the orthodox, almost triumphalist narrative of European history since the war, and to show just how complicated, confused and contingent that story really was… The other really striking thing about Judt’s account is that it gives so much time and thought to what Donald Rumsfeld calls ‘New Europe’… [Judt] moves fluently and deftly from politics and economics to films and television… Judt’s clear-eyed judgment and mastery of detail are at their absolute best… This magnificently rich and readable book