The first edition of this book was hailed by the journal History as 'much the best English textbook in the field', and the third, fully revised, edition is likely to keep it so. Professor Anderson surveys all aspects of European life in the eighteenth century. As before, most of the discussion is on a continent-wide basis; the British Isles are treated as an integral part of the continent; and the book is particularly strong in the attention it devotes to the important but often neglected nations of eastern Europe. It also deals with the European colonial empires, and with the extra-European cultural influences that now affected the life the continent. Furthermore, this edition draws together all the recent important scholarship on the period.