The Idea of Europe finds George Steiner reckoning with Europe from a number of different angles: "Europe is the place where Goethe's garden almost borders on Buchenwald, where the house of Corneille abuts on the market-place in which Joan of Arc was hideously done to death.' It is, in other words, a continent rich with contradiction, whose many tensions cultural, social, political, economic, and religious have for centuries conspired to pull it apart, even as it has become more unified. This book is essential reading for understanding Europe today.