...an impressive and richly documented new book ... A distinguished scholar of Germany, Mr Evans is just as sure-footed across the continent ... The book is particularly illuminating on how social trends after 1848—the spread of education, the standardisation of languages, railway development and the mass production of newspapers—led to the rise of political forces like nationalism and democracy.
It is a vast story, but Evans uses individual narratives to open his chapters, reminding us of the 'human dimension' and allowing 'contemporaries to speak for themselves' ... Evans persuasively emphasises the spread of human power over nature ... The Pursuit of Power offers both a compelling big picture and a flavour of the time.
The enviably Tolstoyan scale of the book allows Evans, first, to immerse the reader in a narrative that moves seamlessly from Russia to Iberia and all points in between. Second, it allows him to explore almost every nook and cranny of European life in this 100-year period ... The analysis sweeps the reader along at a fast pace, punctuated by vivid descriptions of combat on the barricades, diplomatic double-dealing and battlefield butchery ... With its skillful interweave of political conflict and transition, economic transformation, social upheaval and cultural change, The Pursuit of Power bears witness to an old world fading, inside and outside the home, and a new, modern one taking shape.
He does not have a grand ideological thesis to propound, and he is not writing as an iconoclast, eager to smash previous interpretations into tiny shards. He adopts as his broad, unexceptional theme the pursuit of power in all its many forms, which, he quite plausibly suggests, took place more nakedly after 1815 than in earlier periods ... In these sketches, and throughout the volume, Evans gives thorough coverage to the continent as a whole, especially when it comes to writers and intellectuals ... It makes for a traditional framework, perhaps, but one whose enduring value is confirmed by Evans’s fine scholarship. And it reveals him to be more elegiac, in the end, than he might like to admit.
Mr. Evans offers an interesting discussion of how various forms of serfdom disappeared, even as the essence of rural immiseration generally did not. He conveys the degradation of existence for the emergent working class of the cities with controlled pathos yet without acknowledging the improvements in living standards that took place in advanced countries during the last decades of the century ... Evidently, Mr. Evans has not internalized A.J.P. Taylor’s quip that no book should rival the Bible in length. He covers a host of phenomena in exquisite detail while seldome venturing a statistical summary. Nevertheless, he writes with admirable narrative power and possesses a wonderful eye for local color; few readers will complain ... His vast erudition allows him to discuss the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, the Iberian peninsula, or Scandinavia as knowledgeably as the principal West European nation-states.
