An expert and meticulous look at the events that shaped the continent... it should have a prominent place on the shelf of anybody, professional or layperson, who wants to make sense of present-day Europe (Josef Joffe Financial Times)

This is a remarkable pan-European survey, and one can only admire the vast range of scholarship lightly worn (Robert Tombs The Times)

A supreme achievement, wearing its immense learning lightly and written with page-turning energy (Literary Review)

In synthesizing and evaluating an enormous body of scholarship, not only on Europe, East and West, but also on the wider world and the globalisation processes that have so deeply affected European history, Ian Kershaw has produced a historical masterpiece. (Times Literary Supplement)

A formidable historian of detail (Telegraph)

Sir Ian Kershaw is one of the UK's most distinguished historians. His most famous books include Hitler, Fateful Choices and The End. The first volume in his history of modern Europe, To Hell and Back, was described by the Observer as 'superb... likely to become and classic' and by Harold Evans in the New York Times as 'chilling epic-size history... should be required reading'. He lives in Manchester.