Two words may pique the reader’s interest on the cover of this timely, panoramic history of Europe by the distinguished writer on human migration Peter Gatrell: ‘unsettling’ and ‘1945’. Why unsettling, and why choose the end of the second world war as a turning point? By the close of dramatic Part I (‘Violent Peacetime, Cold War Rivalry, Rebuilding Europe 1945–1956’), we have gained detailed insight into just how demographically, economically, politically and psychologically shattered — and geographically unsettled — Europeans were in the decade after 1945.