The Pursuit of Power

Europe: 1815-1914

By: Richard J. Evans

Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan

Richard J. Evans's gripping narrative ranges across a century of social and national conflicts, from the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 to the unification of both Germany and Italy, from the Russo-Turkish wars to the Balkan upheavals that brought this era of relative peace and growing prosperity to an end. Among the great themes it discusses are the decline of religious belief and the rise of secular science and medicine, the journey of art, music, and literature from Romanticism to Modernism, the replacement of old-regime punishments by the modern prison, and the dramatic struggle of feminists for women's equality and emancipation. Uniting the era's broad-ranging transformations was the pursuit of power in all segments of life, from the banker striving for economic power to the serf seeking to escape the power of his landlord, from the engineer asserting society's power over the environment to the psychiatrist attempting to exert science's power over human nature itself.

The first single-volume history of the century, this comprehensive and sweeping account gives the listener a magnificently human picture of Europe in the age when it dominated the rest of the globe.

©2016 Richard J. Evans (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Terrific comprehensive history

Evans's history of 19th century Europe should be required reading for anyone interested in how we came to the situation facing us in the 21st. The beginning of the book,with its focus on geopolitics, is slow going but worth the effort. Evans seems to cover everything: A rich social history that spans the continent from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the onset of WW1. Highly recommended.

A great book

This is a very good and comprehensive history of the 19th century. It is very well written and also very well performed; I do Recommend it highly.

An Excellent History of Pre Great War Europe

Delivered by the steady dulcet tones of Napoleon Ryan, The Pusuit of Power goes in depth with the history of 19th Century Europe and it's inevitable march to WWI.

Facts and Anecdotes

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This is full of facts. However the narrative is dry and jerky as the author goes from fact to fact without enough context or interpretation

What did you like best about this story?

The sweep of history it embraces. It filled in many gaps in my knowledge

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

The endless dates of personages needed to be edited out. They work in a book, not in an audio book. The reader's German needs some work. It is not Bismaaach!

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No

Any additional comments?

I struggled to finish this book because I felt I was learning something. However it was not entertaining in any way. Comprehensive but dry.

Good History, Rough narration

This is a very academic history. Evans is to be commended for a thorough analysis of this time period, and how it brings us into the cataclysms of the 20th century. The narrator has a good voice, but then spoils it with weird voices to emphasize quotations. The writer uses years to indicate where an individual belongs in the "history" of the time, but listening to years from and to, over and over, does end up spoiling the flow of the narrative.