Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789 (Cambridge History of Europe)

Bought used and came looking brand new! If you have to have it for a class like I did I would recommend buying it here.However, if you are reading for pleasure or your own research it's just an okay book. Gives a decent overview, but definitely not the best I've read on this period.

Awesome book!I only get a chance to read this book after a long day...so you know it has to be awesome for me to give it five starsI am considering making my students read it as well.

This book provides a good overview to some of the key themes of European history in the late Medieval and early modern periods. It was a decent refresher of my high school European history class taken over a decade ago. However, it lacked details and more in depth material. Would have liked to see more evidence, supported with citations, of the lives of everyday people who stayed in Europe during the colonial period. Being a book on European history it devotes a good portion of the material to Europeans outside of Europe. This book would be useful as a introductory course textbook at the undergraduate level.

My second time period i like in history besides the 20th century.

I read this for a course and learned a lot from it, excellent format.

this book is my textbook in the university, and it is cheaper then in bookstore of the university. i like it

This outstanding college textbook is one volume in a series titled the Cambridge History of Europe. Wiesner-Hanks begins with a helpful discussion of periodization. She notes that historians have usually conceived of the modern era as beginning in the middle of the fifteenth century and continuing until the present. Within this category historians also recognize a subdivision: early modern points to the period between 1450 and 1789, while what might be called truly modern runs from 1789 to the present.The author justifies her selection of 1450 as the beginning the early modern period by pointing to several events and episodes close to that date: the world-changing advent of movable metal type, the end of the Hundred Years War, the siege of Constantinople, the first Portuguese voyages to West Africa, and the births of such luminaries as Columbus, Vespucci, Queen Isabella of Spain, Leonardo da Vinci, and Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch. The end date, 1789, marks the year of the French Revolution. It is also close in time to Edmund Cartwright's invention of the steam-powered loom, the migration of convicts from Britain to Australia, Mary Wallstonecraft's publication of "The Vindication of the Rights of Women," and the disappearance of Poland from the map, compliments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia.Regarding physical scale, Wiesner-Hanks raises the question of what we mean by Europe. She notes that if one draws the eastern boundary of the continent at the Ural Mountains and the Ural River, Europe then includes a huge swath of territory that, culturally, may or may not easily match. For example, does the Ottoman Empire qualify as "European"? As the text proceeds, the reader finds that Wiesner-Hanks does not shy away from including eastern Europe, which, as she indicates, has sometimes been treated as peripheral. So, for example, regarding religion in 1450, she explains that the Byzantine Empire lasted for a thousand years after the end of the Roman Empire. The Roman Church and the Orthodox Church officially split in 1054 when the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. However, unlike the Roman Church, the Orthodox Church did not have a single canon law, and did not have a single language like Latin.When it comes to the task of organizing the vast amount of material that a survey like this should include, Wiesner-Hanks combines a chronological and topical arrangement. For each of two periods, divided somewhat arbitrarily--1450 to 1600 and 1600 to 1789--the author treats five themes: (a) individuals in society, (b) politics and power, (c) cultural and intellectual life, (d) religious reform and consolidation, (e) economics and technology. In addition, the first, central, and last chapters treat "Europe in the World" in 1450, from 1450 to 1600, and from 1600 to 1789. These chapters reflect the author's interest in "viewing Europe as both larger and more connected to the rest of the world than it often has been," which seems to be a trend in recent historiography.Several features of this work make it appealing to college students. Many illustrations and maps accompany the text. Consistent with the author's social-history approach, dozens of brief sidebars and text boxes put on display material from primary sources that reveal everyday activities and ideas of ordinary people. The author sometimes focuses on sex, a topic that already interests students. And, Cambridge has provided a companion website. Five stars!

This worked out really well for my history class that I needed to take but because it is not a print replica it is very hard to keep up with the rest of the classes page numbers. If we stop anywhere other than a chapter head then I'm completely lost. Other than that it seems good. Gave it three stars because it is extremely annoying but the fact that all the text is there is good.