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The preface/introduction explicitly says that it's going to be a Eurocentric book focusing on France and Britain. Which is fair enough, although the title is a little dishonest - he only has limited space to cover an era of massive change and even though it's very disappointing not to see much about the rest of the world it's not surprising and at least it covers some stuff more in depth.

However, there's no excuse for stuff like this:

"There is much to be said for the enlightened and systematic despotism of the utilitarian bureaucrats who built the British raj in this period. They brought peace, much development of public services, administrative efficiency, reliable law, and incorrupt government at the higher levels. But economically they failed in the most sensational manner. Of all the territories under the administration of European governments, or governments of the European type, even including Tsarist Russia, India continued to be haunted by the most gigantic and murderous famines; perhaps—though statistics are lacking for the earlier period—increasingly so as the century wore on."

Praise for the British Raj in such terms is bad enough from a Marxist historian, but to put the praise and the fact of the atrocious famines they oversaw together makes it baffling. Surely this'd be a chance to point out the way the famines and the government were part of Britain profiting off Indian exploitation? But he doesn't go further. Kind of disconcerting.

However, I've rated 4 stars because 1) i feel this sort of thing is very hard to avoid in history books, and there's very little other unpleasant opinion in the book 2) keeping in mine the above biases, it's a really good overview of the period. Tries to cover general political history, scientific history, art history, economic history - obviously it does none comprehensively but it gives you a really good idea of where Europe particularly was at in the period and what sort of forces and ideas were involved in the changes that happened and makes me really want to learn more. Also seques perfectly into his next book, heh.

ooh also he wears his Marxism on his sleeve but there's no political polemic, it's just clear which biases inform his views

one small annoyance: quoting French, German etc without a translation. kind of useless for a lot of people

oh also someone just pointed out how little he talks about the haitian revolution, which is kind of a big thing to miss out - his Eurocentricism is really noticeable with stuff like that