Early in 1978 the Federal German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, decided to propose the creation in Europe of a zone of monetary stability. He was offended by the neglect of the United States dollar by the administration of President Carter and by the effect on German competitiveness. He resented the pressure brought to bear on the German Government by countries such as the USA and the UK. They, unable to manage their own economies successfully, were seeking relief from their problems in the expansion of the German economy. This, he considered, would be inflationary. Germany's enormous reserves and its current account surplus were evidence of successful economic management. The USA and the UK should try to emulate Germany, not attempt to persuade it to become a ‘locomotive’ and thereby follow their primrose path. The zone of monetary stability in Europe was to be his answer to American neglect and American pressure. How exactly it would fulfil the role of an answer was never explained. But politics has its own rationale not always fit for frank exposition. The zone would be created by the linking of European exchange rates in a fixed but adjustable relationship. If, as expected, the yoking of weaker currencies acted as lead in the Deutschmark's balloon and thereby safeguarded German competitiveness, that would be a bonus, for the Chancellor if not for the Bundesbank. The now defunct Bretton Woods system had had the same objective of monetary stability and, indeed, had succeeded in it for many years. One of the surviving Bretton Woods institutions was the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the same way the European zone of monetary stability would have its Fund, a European Monetary Fund (EMF), equipped with reserves subscribed by member states. Its activities would no doubt resemble those of the IMF, strengthening the resolve of governments in embracing the paths of economic prudence, thereby helping to calm markets when they turned against one currency or another. No doubt it would also, like the IMF, give governments advice which would not always be welcome.

I was first taught by A. J. P. Taylor in the Hilary Term of my second year (1957–8) at Magdalen, for what was called English History III, the period from 1685 to 1939. I was not an expert on modern English history, but I had been taught the outlines well at school, and that background together with work on a prize essay the previous long vacation meant that I had a closer knowledge of the period than most undergraduates possess before starting tutorials on it officially, and because Alan Taylor started in 1760 I was soon on familiar ground, and even able to see that I knew more about some episodes than he did.

Alan Taylor was something of a transitional figure among British historians. He began with more than a touch of the old-style gentleman scholar about him but went on to become an early example of the media personality, in some ways a second-half-of-the-twentieth-century variant of this. Yet he was a substantial scholar who could draw large academic audiences as well as someone who could present history to a big national audience. He wrote on traditional topics in a traditional manner, but he took narrative history to new heights.

United Germany ‘will stand with us as an ally’, confidently predicted Robert B. Zoellick, who served as Secretary of State James A. Baker 3rd's chief of staff and as the overseer of US negotiations on reunification. Testifying before the Senate in September 1990 on the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Zoellick asserted that the unification process proved that ‘the United States can lead and persevere…in the post-cold war world‘. Despite such optimism, however, the ambivalance in past US–German relations, the erosion of American leverage during the unification process and the narrowness of Washington's conception of ‘leadership’ in Europe all suggested a future more problematic than the happy scenario Zoellick sketched for the senators.

With the advent of Gorbachev, two new words, perestroika (reform) and glasnost' (openness), entered the Western vocabulary. They also served as the bywords for economic and social change that continues to this day. Simultaneously, the search for a solution to the economic ills of the former USSR has led to a rediscovery and a re-examination of the past. In this context, scholars of the successor states to the Soviet Union will find much of interest in the works reviewed here which take us chronologically from the late nineteenth century to the late 1980s.

Indeed, much of the tension in relations between Paris and Washington, Paris and Bonn, and Bonn and London is that none of Germany's former enemies and present allies want to be left behind when the moment comes to make a new European order with the Russians. The Germans do not wish to be left out either…. The basis of the problem…is what to do about the Germans….