**An unflinching and intelligent alternative history of the twentieth
century that provides a provocative vision of Europe's past, present,
and future.
**
**"[A] splendid book." --The New York Times Book Review
**
Dark Continent provides an alternative history of the twentieth
century, one in which the triumph of democracy was anything but a
forgone conclusion and fascism and communism provided rival political
solutions that battled and sometimes triumphed in an effort to determine
the course the continent would take.
Mark Mazower strips away myths that have comforted us since World War
II, revealing Europe as an entity constantly engaged in a bloody project
of self-invention. Here is a history not of inevitable victories and
forward marches, but of narrow squeaks and unexpected twists, where
townships boast a bronze of Mussolini on horseback one moment, only to
melt it down and recast it as a pair of noble partisans the next.