Roller-Coaster

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE 2020

''Brilliant ... a historical masterpiece'' The Times Literary Supplement

From one of Britain''s most distinguished historians and the bestselling author of Hitler, this is the definitive history of a divided Europe, from the aftermath of the Second World War to the present.

After the overwhelming horrors of the first half of the 20th century, described by Ian Kershaw in his previous book as having gone ''to Hell and back'', the years from 1950 to 2017 brought peace and relative prosperity to most of Europe. Enormous economic improvements transformed the continent. The catastrophic era of the world wars receded into an ever more distant past, though its long shadow continued to shape mentalities.

Europe was now a divided continent, living under the nuclear threat in a period intermittently fraught with anxiety. Europeans experienced a ''roller-