Book excerpt: Europe, 1848: three imperial dynasties rule over territories stretching from Germany south to the Adriatic Sea and east to the Bering Strait on the Pacific Coast. The Houses of Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov rule over lands more vast than the British Empire at its greatest extent. In their struggle for continental domination and for eternal guarantees for their rule by divine right, they nurture the weeds of reaction that are destined to choke European democracy and become part of the conflagration of 1914. World-renowned diplomatic correspondent and historian C.L. Sulzberger traces the rise and fall of the three dynasties from their emergence as fuedal princelings to their coronation as absolute imperial lords, wielding vain, often foolish, often cruel, reactionary sovereignty over a degraded peasant population. - Jacket flap.