1821 and the Making of Modern Europe

The Greek Revolution

WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2021 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2022 
A NEW STATESMAN AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 
 
'Deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come' Roderick Beaton, Times Literary Supplement 
 
In the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon's defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Europe and the United States: freedom for Greece. 
 
Mark Mazower's wonderful new book recreates one of the most compelling, unlikely and significant events in the story of modern Europe. In the face of near impossible odds, the people of the villages, valleys and islands of Greece rose up against Sultan Mahmud II and took on the might of the imperial Ottoman armed forces, its Turkish cavalrymen, Albanian foot soldiers and the fearsome Egyptians. Despite the most terrible disasters, they held on until military intervention by Russia, France and Britain finally secured the kingdom of Greece. 
 
Mazower brilliantly brings together the different strands of the story. He takes us into the minds of revolutionary conspirators and the terrors of besieged towns, the stories of itinerant priests, sailors and slaves, ambiguous heroes and defenceless women and children struggling to stay alive amid a conflict of extraordinary brutality. Ranging across the Eastern Mediterranean and far beyond, he explores the central place of the struggle in the making of Romanticism and a new kind of politics that had volunteers flocking from across Europe to die in support of the Greeks. A story of how statesmen came to terms with an even more powerful force than themselves - the force of nationalism - this is above all a book about how people decided to see their world differently and, at an often terrible cost to themselves and their families, changed history. 
 
'Exquisite, impressive' The Times 
 
'Superbly subtle and thorough' Daily Telegraph

The Greek Revolution offers the best and fullest explanation, to date, for a series of events whose effects would change the entire geopolitics of Europe. Written with compassion and understanding for the human cost of that achievement, it deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come.

Exquisite detail, altogether impressive ... a cornucopia of revolution.

Compelling and disturbing, enriched by many new sources and excellent colour illustrations, and paying attention to the role of Ottomans and Albanians as well as Greeks, Mazower's book will become the standard account of this crucial revolution.

An engaging combination of fast-flowing narrative and insightful analysis.

Encyclopaedic ... superbly subtle and thorough.

With vivid detail, impeccable scholarship and great nuance, Mazower shows how the modern idea of the nation emerges out of the complex, sometimes random and often messy interactions between a plurality of agents ... An illuminating account of both the unifying power of myths about the past, and the dangers inherent when such myths are connected to political reality.

As the subtitle of Mark Mazower's new book maintains, events in Greece 200 years ago helped shape modern Europe. His elegant and rigorous account also holds lessons for modern geopolitics: about the galvanising effects of violence, the role of foreign intervention and the design flaws in dreams.

An epic narrative, both scholarly, breathlessly page-turning and packed with hauntingly romantic characters. Few historians dig so deep or with such sympathy into what history felt like to those living through it ... anyone in search of an opera plot should scour these drama-packed pages.

Broad in scope and colorful in detail, this is a masterful portrait of a historic watershed. ... [A] sweeping history of Greece's 1821 war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. [Mazower] recounts the revolution's inception among Greek emigrés with an idealistic dream of Hellenic nationalism and its actuality as a murky, eight-year struggle fought mainly by peasants and warlords who were motivated less by patriotism than by religious hatred of Muslims, factional vendettas, and mercenary self-interest ... A lucid, elegantly written, and often gripping account.

On the bicentennial of the Greek revolution, a prominent scholar tracks the historical detail and enormous international significance of the improbable, largely grassroots uprising against the Ottoman Empire. Mazower, a Columbia professor and winner of the Wolfson Prize for History who has written extensively about Greece and the Balkans, ably ties together the many disparate threads of this complex history of Greek independence. ... An elucidating history that is relevant to understanding the geopolitics of Greece today.

Mark Mazower is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University, where he directs the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. His previous books include Inside Hitler's Greece, Dark Continent, The Balkans and Salonica, City of Ghosts. His most recent book, The Greek Revolution, won the Duff Cooper Prize.

In the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon's defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Europe and the United States: freedom for Greece. 
 
Mark Mazower's wonderful new book recreates one of the most unlikely and significant events in the story of modern Europe. In the face of near impossible odds, the people of Greece rose up against Sultan Mahmud II and took on the might of the imperial Ottoman armed forces, its Turkish cavalrymen, Albanian foot soldiers and the fearsome Egyptians. Despite the most terrible disasters, they held on until military intervention by Russia, France and Britain finally secured the kingdom of Greece. 
 
Mazower brilliantly brings together the different strands of the story. He takes us into the stories of revolutionary conspirators and besieged towns, itinerant priests and slaves, and defenceless women and children struggling to stay alive amid a conflict of extraordinary brutality. A story of how statesmen came to terms with an even more powerful force than themselves - the force of nationalism - this is above all a book about how people decided to see their world differently and, at an often terrible cost to themselves and their families, changed history.

A Russian Past and the Journey Home

What You Did Not Tell

SHORLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 
 
NEW STATESMAN AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 
 
'Brilliant ... a staggering story' Robert Fox, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 
'Fascinating, vast and rich ... a dramatic family memoir' Guardian 
 
Uncovering his family's remarkable and moving stories, Mark Mazower recounts the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants. It was a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht. His British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war and revolution. Max, the grandfather, had started out as a socialist and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it. His wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making their way in Soviet society. 
 
In the centenary of the Russian Revolution, What You Did Not Tell recounts a brand of socialism erased from memory - humanistic, impassioned, and broad-ranging in its sympathies. But it also explores the unexpected happiness that may await history's losers, the power of friendship, and the love of place that allowed Max and Frouma's son to call England home.

Brilliant ... a staggering story

Fascinating, vast and rich ... a dramatic family memoir

Mark Mazower is the author of Inside Hitler's Greece, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, The Balkans, which won the Wolfson Prize for History, and Salonika: City of Ghosts, which won both the Runciman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He has taught at the University of Sussex, Princeton University and Birkbeck College, University of London. He is now Professor of History at Columbia University.

Uncovering his family's remarkable and moving stories, Mark Mazower recounts the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants. It was a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht. His British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war and revolution. Max, the grandfather, had started out as a socialist and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it. His wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making their way in Soviet society. 
 
In the centenary of the Russian Revolution, What You Did Not Tell recounts a brand of socialism erased from memory - humanistic, impassioned, and broad-ranging in its sympathies. But it also explores the unexpected happiness that may await history's losers, the power of friendship, and the love of place that allowed Max and Frouma's son to call England home.

The History of an Idea

Governing the World

The compelling and provocative history of world government, from acclaimed author Mark Mazower 
 
Shortlisted for the RUSI 2013 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military Literature 
 
In 1815 the shocked and exhausted victors of the decades of fighting that had engulfed Europe for a generation agreed to a new system for keeping the peace. Instead of independent states changing sides, doing deals and betraying one another, a new, collegial 'Concert of Europe' would ensure that the brutal chaos of the Napoleonic Wars never happened again. 
 
Mark Mazower's remarkable new book recreates two centuries of international government - the struggle to spread values and build institutions to bring order to an anarchic and dangerous state system.

Mazower has strengthened his claim to be the preeminent historian of a generation ... On rare occasions, a work of history emerges that not only fundamentally refashions our understanding of the past, it enables us to reassess the present and, with luck, influence our future. I advise everyone who is concerned about our precarious situation to learn from and absorb Mazower's remarkable achievement

A significant contribution to historical scholarship, with the chapters on the 19th century's remarkable swirl of politics, ideas and organisations being particularly original and valuable ... Simply for giving us this lucid account, Mazower deserves our gratitude. But Governing the World is also an intriguing read because of the strong argument he places within it ... This new work certainly gave this reviewer an awful lot to think about - to an author, there may be no greater praise than that

Governing Europe, and then the whole world ... this idea has found its perfect chronicler in Mark Mazower, whose perceptions are cosmopolitan, humane, learned, and properly skeptical. What is more, his history is written in clear, elegant prose. Essential reading not just for historians, but anyone interested in the troubled world we live in

A prodigious work: a master historian's reconstruction of how individuals and nations since 1815 have sought to promote national interests in ever more complicated international settings. A dramatic, novel account of ideas and institutions in collision with hard realities. Indispensable also for its full and subtle account of American policies since 1917, always with a fine touch for the hitherto neglected person or little noticed moment that illuminates historic processes. Profound, relevant, and morally instructive - and a pleasure to read

This is a book that needed to be written ... [Governing the World] is truly illuminating ... The story is a fascinating one, and Mazower tells it with authority and verve

The idea of global government has entranced the world for centuries. Mark Mazower's brilliant book shows how much effort has gone into this idea - and how futile it has mostly been in an era of individualism and growing divisiveness

Mazower is a man of immense erudition, a real scholar ... [A] remarkable book ... Reading him is like being lectured by the best left-wing professor you'll ever have. Or like reading the best foreign affairs writer the Guardian or the Nation has to offer ... You can learn a lot from him

Mark Mazower is Ira D.Wallach Professor of World Order Studies and Professor of History Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, The Balkans: A Short History (which won the Wolfson Prize for History), Salonica: City of Ghosts (which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Runciman Award) and Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. He has also taught at Birkbeck College, University of London, Sussex University and Princeton. He lives in New York.

Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe

Hitler's Empire

Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire is a provocative account of the rise and fall of Nazi Europe by one of Britain's leading historians. Hitler's empire was the largest, most brutal and most ambitious reshaping of Europe in history. Inspired by the imperial legacy of those such as the British, the Third Reich cast its shadow from the Channel Islands to the Caucasus and ruled hundreds of millions. Yet, as Mark Mazower's groundbreaking new account shows, it was an empire built on an illusion.From Hitler's plans for vast motorways crossing an ethnically cleansed Russian steppe, to dreams of a German super-economy rivalling America's, Mazower reveals the lethal fusion of mass murder, modern managerialism and colossal incompetence that underpinned the Nazi New Order. Ultimately Hitler's empire ended up consuming its own, leaving destruction in its wake and finishing not just with the downfall of Germany, but an entire continent.'Remarkable ... provocative ... an important new book' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Adam Tooze, Sunday Telegraph'A stunning survey ... breaks new ground' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year 'A first-class account' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Richard Overy, Literary Review'Brilliant ... a must for anyone who has a serious interest in the dreadful Third Reich' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Justin Cartwright, Spectator'Exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of the enterprise with forensic skill and wit' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Christopher Silvester, Daily ExpressMark Mazower is the author of Inside Hitler's Greece, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, The Balkans - which won the Wolfson Prize for History - and Salonika: City of Ghosts, which won both the Runciman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He has taught at the University of Sussex, Princeton University and Birkbeck College, University of London. He is now Professor of History at Columbia University.

Mark Mazower is the author of Inside Hitler's Greece, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, The Balkans, which won the Wolfson Prize for History, and Salonika: City of Ghosts, which won both the Runciman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He has taught at the University of Sussex, Princeton University and Birkbeck College, University of London. He is now Professor of History at Columbia University.

Hitler's empire was the largest, most brutal and most ambitious reshaping of Europe in history. Inspired by the imperial legacy of those such as the British, the Third Reich cast its shadow from the Channel Islands to the Caucasus and ruled hundreds of millions. Yet, as Mark Mazower's groundbreaking new account shows, it was an empire built on an illusion. 
 
From Hitler's plans for vast motorways crossing an ethnically cleansed Russian steppe, to dreams of a German super-economy rivalling America's, Mazower reveals the lethal fusion of mass murder, modern managerialism and colossal incompetence that underpinned the Nazi New Order. Ultimately Hitler's empire ended up consuming its own, leaving destruction in its wake and finishing not just with the downfall of Germany, but an entire continent.

Europe's Twentieth Century

Dark Continent

From award-winning historian Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century retells the story of a century of division, charting the struggles of rival ideologies to create a new world order for mankind. 
 
 The end of the First World War saw old empires swept away and the opportunity to build a better society from the ruins. Yet the result was division and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale, as liberal democracy, communism and fascism struggled against one another for mastery of the world. 
 
 Dark Continent radically overturns the myth of Europe as a safe haven of democracy to redefine our view of the twentieth century. 
 
 'Original, thought-provoking, iconoclastic' Frank McLynn, Irish Times 
 
 'Fascinating and forceful' Martin Gilbert, Literary Review 
 
 'Mazower leaves us, in this wonderful book, with an account of our century that anyone who takes an interest in Europe's present and future will enlarge their mind by reading' John Keegan, Daily Telegraph 
 
 'There are few who can walk with A.J.P. Taylor. One is Mark Mazower ... a tour de force' Alex Danchev, TLS 
 
 'Combines narrative verve with wise and humane analysis. For anyone who wants to know how Europe came to be the way it is in the years since 1900, this is the work to provide the answers' David Cannadine, Observer Books of the Year 
 
 Mark Mazower is the author of Inside Hitler's Greece, The Balkans, which won the Wolfson Prize for History, Salonika: City of Ghosts, which won both the Runciman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize and Hitler's Empire.

Dark Continent is a searching history of Europe's most brutal century. Stripping away the comforting myths and illusions that we have grown up with since the Second World War, Mark Mazower presents an unflinching account of a continent locked in a finely balanced struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambition and national self-determination, liberty and the tyrannies of Right and Left.

Into the Labyrinth of History

The House in the Film

Mark Mazower

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are 
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

An immense contribution... In tracing the evolving meaning of ‘antisemitism,’ [Mazower] demonstrates persuasively how we might turn it from a weapon back into a word... Rigorous and lucid

Mazower’s book contains many distinctions – subtle twists of the lens that bring different shades of personal and ideological animus into focus... For Mazower to provide any respite of clarity on a topic befogged in rage and confusion is achievement enough

One of the many virtues of Mazower’s excellent and timely book is his effort to restore historical context to a word that has become a generic term of condemnation... In this lucid survey, Mazower shows that the history of anti-Jewish sentiment is a story of varied accusations, hatreds, and fears—as entangled with the rise of modernity as it is with our present politics

An illuminating new book... On Antisemitism does not seek to define the concept but more usefully tracks how its meaning has changed over time

A Word in History

For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudo-science. Such threats culminated in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. 
 
The landscape is very different now, as Mark Mazower argues in this piercingly brilliant book. More than four-fifths of the world’s Jews now live in Israel and the United States, with the former’s military dominance of its region guaranteed by the latter while the loudest voices decrying antisemitism see it coming from the Left not the Right. 
 
Mazower clearly and carefully shows us how we got here, seeking to illuminate rather than blame. Very few words have the punch of ‘antisemitism’ and yet no term is more liable to be misunderstood in ways affecting free speech and foreign policy alike. On Antisemitism is a vitally important attempt to draw a line that must be drawn.

Mark Mazower

Praise for On Antisemitism

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Books by Mark Mazower

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Praise for On Antisemitism

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Mazower has written a stunner of a book: informed, questioning, probing, thought-provoking, and highly readable

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Books by Mark Mazower

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are
desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity