This new edition of this highly successful and influential work includes two entirely new chapters - on Europe and the wider world and on the Revolutionary crisis - and is extensively revised throughout.

List of Maps.- Chronology.- Rulers of the Major States.- Preface.- Hostile Environment.- Economic Framework.- The Wheels of Commerce.- Society.- Towns.- Faith and the Churches.- Enlightenment.- Culture and the Arts.- Science and Medicine.- International Relations.- Armies and Warfare.- Europe and the Outer World.- Government and Administration.- Ideology, Politics and Reform.- The Revolutionary Crisis.- Epilogue.- Notes.- Select Bibliography.- Index.

'A good overview of a most pivotal period in European history with comprehensive detail of social institutions and development.' - Tim Megarry, University of Greenwich 'Those who are familiar with the first edition of this book will know that Jeremy Black has drawn on a wide range of primary sources, as well as engaging fully with current debates on points of historiography and interpretation. This second edition is much more than a revised reprint. The new book is much longer than the original, by some 136 pages in fact, and contains two chapters which are wholly new...The select bibliographies for each chapter will prove of immense utility to students, and one of the virtues of this book is that it combines ample factual material with shrewd comment in such a way as to stimulate thoughtful debate about major issues so that the reader is compelled to ask searching questions about the complexities of European society and culture in the eighteenth century.' - John Derry, Archives Reviews of the first edition: ' His book will certainly become a standard introduction to the period... The range of topics is exhaustive, adding chapters on culture and the arts, and science and medicine, to the normal fare of economy, society, intellectual life and the activity of States.' - William Doyle, Times Literary Supplement ' Jeremy Black...has produced a work as remarkable for its vivid concreteness as for its puncturing of a series of tired preconceptions.' - Jonathan Clark, Spectator ' Jeremy Black has drawn on an astonishing variety of sources, many of them unpublished, to produce a many-sided study of the 18th century, which approaches a total history.' - Professor Paul Dukes, University of Aberdeen

'A good overview of a most pivotal period in European history with comprehensive detail of social institutions and development.' - Tim Megarry, University of Greenwich 'Those who are familiar with the first edition of this book will know that Jeremy Black has drawn on a wide range of primary sources, as well as engaging fully with current debates on points of historiography and interpretation. This second edition is much more than a revised reprint. The new book is much longer than the original, by some 136 pages in fact, and contains two chapters which are wholly new...The select bibliographies for each chapter will prove of immense utility to students, and one of the virtues of this book is that it combines ample factual material with shrewd comment in such a way as to stimulate thoughtful debate about major issues so that the reader is compelled to ask searching questions about the complexities of European society and culture in the eighteenth century.' - John Derry, Archives Reviews of the first edition: ' His book will certainly become a standard introduction to the period... The range of topics is exhaustive, adding chapters on culture and the arts, and science and medicine, to the normal fare of economy, society, intellectual life and the activity of States.' - William Doyle, Times Literary Supplement ' Jeremy Black...has produced a work as remarkable for its vivid concreteness as for its puncturing of a series of tired preconceptions.' - Jonathan Clark, Spectator ' Jeremy Black has drawn on an astonishing variety of sources, many of them unpublished, to produce a many-sided study of the 18th century, which approaches a total history.' - Professor Paul Dukes, University of Aberdeen