The Idea of Europe - Tapa dura

It should probably be compulsory reading for all students in Europe and in the U.S... it is a monument of culture and a challenging and erudite meditation on the idea of Europe. -- Jacqueline Grapin, founder of the European Institute Anyone looking for his or her European identity should read this short conference, for it is probably one of the best attempts to define Europe. -- Jofre M. Rocabert * The New Federalist * One of the most audacious thinkers of our time. * Independent on Sunday * George Steiner is a deeply erudite, elegant writer, with a profound knowledge of European culture. * Spectator * The polymath's polymath. The erudition is almost as extraordinary as the prose: dense, knowing, allusive. * The New York Times Book Review * No one now writing on literature can match Steiner as polymath and polyglot, and few can equal the verve and eloquence of his writing. * The Washington Post *

The Idea of Europe finds George Steiner reckoning with Europe from a number of different angles: "Europe is the place where Goethe's garden almost borders on Buchenwald, where the house of Corneille abuts on the market-place in which Joan of Arc was hideously done to death.' It is, in other words, a continent rich with contradiction, whose many tensions cultural, social, political, economic, and religious have for centuries conspired to pull it apart, even as it has become more unified. This book is essential reading for understanding Europe today.