Walter McDougall’s book reviewed in the Wall Street Journal

Both democracy and modern science drew on Europe’s unique intellectual heritage, but the region’s global dominance did not survive the 20th century.

Narrators of great events tend to write grand prose. But a casual tone goes over better with a lecture-hall audience. Walter A. McDougall has taught a course in modern European history at the University of Pennsylvania for four decades. In “The Mighty Continent,” he condenses a grand historical narrative into a conversational and erudite survey of a civilization that “invented the modern world.” Mr. McDougall justifies his lucid and expansive method by quoting Rudyard Kipling: “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”

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