The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 - Hardcover

Blanning, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713990872 ISBN 13: 9780713990874

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2007

Synopsis

In The Pursuit of Glory Tim Blanning brings to life one of the most extraordinary and dynamic periods in Europe's history: from the desolate, battered and introvert continent of the end of the Thirty Years War to the overwhelmingly dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon.

How did people really live their lives? How did they understand their world? What did they buy? What did they eat? How did they pray? What were their loyalties and their values?

From the lives of ordinary farmers and soldiers to great kings, princes and bishops and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon); from art, leisure pursuits and garden design to the strange sport of fox-tossing, Blanning explores this era of immense change, and cultural, political and technological ferment. This was a world in which the elite were obsessed with the pursuit of glory: their own glory, that of their families and that of their countries. It was a time of immense expenditure - as much on clothes, banquets and palaces as on fortresses and artillery - which shaped the societies and economies of entire countries.

About this title

Review:

To cover a period in which so much changed is no mean undertaking. It
would have been all too easy to have become bogged down in remorseless
detail. Somehow, Blanning has not only managed to avoid this pitfall, but
has instead produced what can only be called a jolly good read. -- Leslie Mitchell, Literary Review, April 2007

'...strikes a nice balance between the Enlightenment's optimistic rationalism and the mud-soaked reality of everyday life'
-- Dominic Sandbrook, Telegraph Books of the Year

Economics, social policy, medicine, culture, popular religion, the
position of women, the role of the Jesuits, the importance of hunting: it's
hard to think of a significant feature of human life that is not given
serious and well-informed treatment in this book. The result is one of the
most impressive general histories to have appeared for many decades. -- Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph, 15 April 2007

Europe's early-modern history viewed from an Olympian height - a
grand, gripping and all-encompassing read. -- Sunday Times 7 April 2007

This is broad-brush history writing at its best - authoritative,
fresh, crammed with incident and ideas and eminently readable.
-- George Rosie, Sunday Herald

This work's most winning quality is the sense one has throughout
of being in the company of not only the most expert but also the most
congenial of historical guides, a man who is himself a perfect product of
the European Enlightenment: humane, rational, sceptical and with an
encyclopedic learning enlivened by a mordant Voltairian wit. Let the
nations rejoice: this history of Europe is a truly glorious book. -- John Adamson, Sunday Times, 29 April 2007

`Tim Blanning's The Pursuit of Glory, a magnificent survey of Europe from 1648 to 1815, is lucid and all-encompassing but hard to read with a jaw permanently dropped in admiration'
-- Michael Prodger, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year

About the Author:

Tim Blanning is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. His other books include The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, The French Revolutionary Wars 1787-1802 and The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0713990872
• ISBN 13: 9780713990874
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 736