The Illustrated History of Europe represents a watershed in historical writing. The collective effort of a team of twelve European historians, it unravels the many cultural, economic, social and political strands of over 14,000 years of Europe's history from a European rather than a national perspective. With this broad view it examines the great prehistoric people migrations, the cave paintings of Spain and France, the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity, the Middle Ages, the glory of the Renaissance, the revolutions of the Reformation, the dawn of industrialization, Empire building and the two world wars of this century, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the USSR. It concludes with the unexpected return of war to Europe with the collapse of Yugoslavia and examines current hopes and plans for a united Europe in this new millennium.