Book excerpt: This comprehensive overview analyzes the people, places, and issues at the heart of modern Europe's major historical events. An ideal reference guide to the period, this work highlights the various developments and changes that occurred in Europe within the last 200-plus years and examines the participation of the major European powers in each. Topics include the Napoleonic era, the unification of Italy and Germany, Victorian England, fascism and Nazism, the Cold War, and the expansion and consolidation of the European Union.