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    The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815
    The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815
    The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815
    Audiobook35 hours

    The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815

    Written by Tim Blanning

    Narrated by James Cameron Stewart

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The New York Times bestselling volume in the Penguin History of Europe series

    Between the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Battle of Waterloo, Europe underwent an extraordinary transformation that saw five of the modern world's great revolutions-scientific, industrial, American, French, and romantic. In this much-admired addition to the monumental Penguin History of Europe series, Tim Blanning brilliantly investigates the forces that transformed Europe from a medieval society into a vigorous powerhouse of the modern world. Blanning renders this vast subject immediate and absorbing by making fresh connections between the most mundane details of life and the major cultural, political, and technological transformations that birthed the modern age.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 20, 2019
    ISBN9781541401891
    The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815

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    Reviews for The Pursuit of Glory

    4/5

    91 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is the volume in Penguin's History of Europe series covering the "long 18th century", and it's presumably the format of the series that is responsible for some of the odder aspects of the book's design, including the total absence of notes and references, which would render it essentially useless to any serious student. Fortunately I'm only a frivolous student, so that didn't put me off too much, but it is a very important point to bear in mind if you're thinking about buying the book. Blanning takes a thematic approach, following particular topics across the continent and across the years apparently more-or-less as the fancy takes him, without a very conspicuous plan or agenda. Broadly, the first part of the book is about social and technological questions, the second about kingship and power, the third about ideas, and the rather rushed and neglected fourth about warfare. This means you're likely to get lost quite quickly if you don't already have a reasonably clear idea of the outlines of 18th century European history, but it does pick up some interesting patterns and connections. It isn't like reading Hobsbawm or someone like that, who can show you how all the pieces effortlessly fall into one clear ideological framework: most of the time Blanning is exploring at least two different ways of reading the same set of facts and showing how both approaches can teach us something interesting. It's occasionally a little frustrating when there are important chapters Blanning would clearly have liked to write but didn't and others he wrote without much enthusiasm. Warfare, for instance, is a topic that evidently lost its novelty for Blanning long ago, but must have been included at the insistence of the Penguin editors, whilst we never get the chapter on Methodism, Pietism and Jansenism that Blanning keeps referring to.The period is one that includes a lot of big personalities. Blanning doesn't fall into the temptation of diverting the book into a string of mini-biographies, but he does let Peter and Catherine of Russia, Frederick of Prussia, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Voltaire, Goethe and the rest all get their fair share of attention. Frederick the Great is clearly a favourite, and Blanning quotes frequently from his writings - I have no problem with that. Napoleon, on the other hand, doesn't seem to excite him at all. Altogether, thinkers get more space here than men of action: Marlborough, Wellington and Nelson are all basically offstage characters, but Clausewitz gets his few minutes in the spotlight. I found this an enjoyable and profitable read: whilst it didn't tell me very much about the 18th century I didn't know at least vaguely already, it did show me a few new ways of linking concepts together. But I don't think it would be a good introduction to the subject for a novice, and it certainly isn't a useful reference book (no footnotes!).
    • 2/5
      I'm sure it's incredibly difficult to write a book about European History covering a hundred and fifty years which is at all academically respectable; Mr Blanning has certainly done it. But the balancing of respectability with accessibility has come at great cost. First, what is surely the most bizarre decision every taken in the history of publishing, this book has no end-notes. So where an author might want to write "the condition of roads in Europe was very bad in 1648, but by the nineteenth century things were very much improved," and then throw a few statistics in the end-note, Blanning compiles thirty pages of anecdotes and figures- about *ROADS* for the love of god. Important, yes. Interesting, no. Second, the book's perspective is bottom up in a slightly too literal sense. That chapter on roads is the first one; you'll read virtually nothing about the 'high' realms of culture and politics until the final chapters. I understand why you might want to do that theoretically, and I agree with those theories, but reading it is water torture. Third, on the evidence of this book Blanning is a militant atheist. Whatever, many academics are, but it skews his analysis and the content of this book. You may well be interested in the gardens and hunting habits of aristos during this period, but to give as many pages to *each* of those activities as you do to the entire edifice of *both* the Catholic and Protestant churches in this time period is flat out wrong.

      These three points, combined with the crazy hype surrounding this book, makes me give it two stars. He writes well, but thanks to the no-notes business it's not very readable. Maybe the second edition can be 350 pages of text plus 200 pages of notes; maybe the narrative element will be a bit stronger. That'd be a five star book, because his judgments are very persuasive and fairly independent of prevailing fashions (e.g., really, the industrial revolution happened and was kinda important.)
    • 5/5
      A lovely book. A relatively light read but covers so many aspects of life in the long eighteenth century with just enough detail and constant revealing details. Blanning makes no attempt to simplify the period as he constantly makes it clear that it was as diverse as any other century, but in its own way. For instance while the Enlightenment was starting to undermine religion there were major religious developments which were far more important for most people. He sets the background up over the major part of the book covering social, political, religious, cultural, geographic etc facets of life at the time - and not just life for the bewigged elite. The concision of his coverage of the political events of the period is quite brilliant - all the vital detail presented, all the important trends delineated yet all in a structured way.
    • 1/5
      I favor books that are not too thrilling, even a bit boring. I don't want the next page pulling at me when it's time for sleep at night. History books usually fill the bill. I know how they turn out so I am along for the ride and whatever insights the author has. But with this book, I find, there are some books too boring even for me. This is good for my sleep. I put the book down well before I had planned. I will say that it has interesting facts about birth control, transportation, the plague, etc. arranged almost encyclopedically. I am still plugging away at it though, I just read several mysteries last wek and stayed up till the early morning. Now I need to catch up on my sleep.
    • 4/5
      This was a really well written and entertaining book. However, the author presupposes a lot of prior knowledge which I sadly lacked, making some of the material a bit challenging - probably not the best choice of read for the inexperienced but I have learned a great deal from reading it. There is a good chance that I'll do so again.I was a bit disappointed by the balance of the content. I felt there is a disproportionate ammount of text devoted to the social history of the period and too little on the meaty political and military events, e.g the wars of the French revolution. I also thought that given that the book does not flow in strict chronological order then it would have really benefited from the inclusion of a simple summary chapter or timeline - something I think newbies to this period of European history would find very useful. That said, I still highly recommend it to anyone.
    • 3/5
      A broad book with a curious structure: its built around topics (such as transportation, or palaces, or art) and discusses their status and evolution throughout the period from roughly 1650 to 1815. The result is a set of separate pieces; the job of the reader here is to assemble them, and it's not easy.The selection of topics seems somewhat whimsical. For instance, there is a full chapter on hunting and one on palaces and gardens, yet there is almost nothing about overseas expansionism and imperialism, almost nothing on slavery.Perhaps the best way to approach this book is to first browse it to get an idea of its topics, and then to use it as a reference for the subject of one's interest.
    • 5/5
      In this narrative of the history of Europe from the Westphalian peace settlement, until the battle of Waterloo, Tim Blanning manages to put in almost everything. He goes threw the state and development in every field conceivable such as agriculture, trade, religion, rulers, palaces, science, the Enlightenment, art (etc.) and then finishes the book of with a more chronological part describing the wars during the period. This specific era in history and the changes during it are many times forgotten. But it was during these years that the kings manage to wrestle the power out of the hands of the nobility, thereby making the nations more powerful. In the beginning of this era anyone was easily burned as a witch whereas in the end of this period any accuser would probably end up in jail themselves. The world saw also the birth of the artist that wasn’t solemnly confined to wishes of a royal patron, but could instead make their living and sometimes fortune by selling their service to an increasing public. The book is interesting, witty and extremely well written. Mr Blanning seems to bee the kind of historian that wants the reader to start thinking. He gives other perspectives on things that are usually seen as matter of facts. Was for example the Holy Roman Empire such a preposterous creation if it managed to stay a float for a thousand years? Was the Industrial Revolution really a “revolution” or is that just a label attached retrospectively to an evolutionary process? It did wonders for this reader who more than occasionally had to pause to grasp the extent of what is written on the pages of this book. At the same time Tim Blanning manages to explain why the Bitts came out on top at the end after all the wars against France, and why this historical period marked the end of the glorious days for Spain, the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, and the beginning for Prussia and Russia.What this book doesn’t give you is a total chronological order in what happened in what country, or simplified explanations over broad areas as materialist historians sometimes do. In my opinion that would have been impossible with the dept and extent of what Tim Blanning manages to cover. But he could have presented his references in other ways than just in the running text.One of the best history books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. A five out of five…
    • 3/5
      I was looking forward to cracking this open as it covers a period that informal readers of history (like me) don't have a lot of familiarity with. Unfortunately, while adequate, the book did not dazzle me as I had hoped.Partly, I think, this is a problem of scope. A book that covers the period from the end of the Reformation to the end of the Napoleonic Wars has an awful lot of ground to cover - the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, the effects of the American and French revolutions, etc. furthermore, that territory differs vastly over the course of two centuries.But the book also has a tendency to rely too heavily on lists of information or names when addressing a specific point, and the organization of the book fails to provide a reader with an easy to follow framework to help understand the reams of information being thrown out. It would have helped somewhat, I think, to put the section on war and peace, which follows a straightforward chronology, at the beginning of the book instead of the end, to give the reader a reference point for the other chapters.In the end, the book adequately covers its subject, but I was hoping for much more.