Includes bibliographical references and index.

The first civilizations -- Early Greece, 2500-500 B.C.E. -- Classical and Hellenistic Greece, 500-100 B.C.E. -- Early Rome and the Roman Republic, 800-146 B.C.E. -- Imperial Rome, 146 B.C.E.-192 C.E. -- The transformation of the classical world -- The classical legacy in the East : Byzantium and Islam -- The West in the early Middle Ages, 500-900 -- The high Middle Ages -- The later Middle Ages, 1300-1500 -- The Italian Renaissance -- The European empires -- The reform of religion -- Europe at war, 1555-1648 -- The experiences of life in early modern Europe, 1500-1650 -- The royal state in the seventeenth century -- Science and commerce in early modern Europe -- The balance of power in eighteenth-century Europe -- Culture and society in eighteenth-century Europe -- The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, 1789-1815 -- Industrial Europe -- Political upheavals and social transformations, 1815-1850 -- State-building and social change in Europe, 1850-1871 -- The crisis of European culture, 1871-1914 -- Europe and the world, 1870-1914 -- War and revolution, 1914-1920 -- The European search for stability, 1920-1939 -- Global conflagration : hot war and Cold War -- Postwar recovery and the new Europe to 1989 -- The West faces the new century, 1989 to the present.