Awakening of Europe

This is the story of Europe tearing itself apart and putting itself back together again. Beginning in 1520, when Martin Luther nailed his grievances to a church door and sparked the Reformation, this book traces a continent in furious transformation. We meet the explorers who circled the globe and proved the world was vaster than imagination, the scientists who turned telescopes on the heavens and questioned everything their ancestors believed, and the monarchs who carved modern nations from the wreckage of feudalism. The era spans from religious wars that bled Europe for a century to the elegant salons of the early Enlightenment, from Galileo's trial before the Inquisition to Newton's Principia Mathematics. It's history rendered as lived experience: the plague, the witch trials, the rise of print culture, the first newspapers. M. B. Synge writes for young readers without condescension, letting the drama of the past speak for itself. This is the volume where modern Europe begins.