In 1815, those with political power in Europe—the aristocracy and the monarchy—felt that international cooperation was the way to restore political order and prevent a recurrence of social and political revolution. This was understandable following many years of war, even before the horrific spectacle of the French Revolution and the widespread destruction and death at the hands of Napoleon’s invading armies. There was some cooperation but what, for the most part, did happen gives the eminent British historian Richard J. Evans the title for his magnificent new book, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, the latest volume in the excellent Penguin History of Europe series.

Evans explores power in many manifestations, from that exercised by the state to the efforts of individuals and groups to improve their lot. During the century covered by this book, there were only a small number of wars in Europe, limited in impact and duration, but governments still sought imperial and diplomatic power and built up their armies, industrialists and bankers wanted economic power, and political parties and revolutionaries strove for political power. Nationalism became both a unifying force as well as a divisive force in numerous states.

Societies were able to increase their power over nature with advances in science, medicine and technology, and new sources of power emerged, from steam to electricity, and from the power loom to the internal combustion engine. Although Charles Darwin and the vast majority of scientists and scholars regarded their discoveries as being compatible with Christianity, their efforts opened the door for intellectual challenges by others to the power and influence of religion.

Part of the masterly narrative focuses on individual lives and shows that arguments and struggles about inequality were at the heart of 19th-century European politics. Millions of people, particularly women, peasants, farmers and Jews, were given greater equality of status. It should be emphasized, though, that equality and emancipation were only partial and conditional, often achieved at great personal cost. Women, for example, might participate in revolutionary uprisings and help build barricades, but men would not allow them to have a say in politics. In raising questions about the rights of men, however, by implication questions were raised about women’s rights as well, and some women used this opportunity to advocate for female emancipation.

The Revolutions of 1848, perhaps the most influential series of revolutionary actions of the age for those without power seeking it, came in the midst of a deep and widespread sense of economic malaise. Desperate, poverty stricken masses staged mass demonstrations that caused a great crisis of confidence in governments throughout Europe. Evans disagrees with those historians who have dismissed the 1848 Revolutions as timid affairs, citing the violence of the crowds, the lynching of hated officials and the storming of palaces and offices.

Throughout the book, there are brief sketches of important but not always well-known personalities who played important roles and information about origins of words coined in this period including “scientist” and “anti-Semitism.”

This outstanding and authoritative synthesis, weaving social, political, diplomatic, cultural, engineering, scientific and economic history, is eminently readable and so carefully crafted that I was always reluctant to put it down. It will help readers appreciate the period of Europe’s growing dominance in the world as seen from variety of perspectives and better understand some of the roots of World War I.

Even given the many racially tainted chapters in U.S. history, the story of Georgia’s Forsyth County still shocks. Patrick Phillips grew up “living inside the bubble of Georgia’s notorious ‘white county’ ” where there were few blacks—and, once, there had been none. Something happened in 1912, and after that, Forsyth County was all-white and proud of it. Its citizens would go to horrific lengths for another 75 years to keep it that way. Phillips, grown and living far away, found himself “ashamed to recall how I defended my silence.” Blood at the Root is the result, an account as riveting in its historical detail as it is troubling in its foreshadowing of racial tensions today.

In 1912, after the rape and murder of young, white Mae Crow and the so-called confession by black teenager Ernest Knox, white “night riders” took matters into their own hands. After one of the three suspects was beaten, lynched and shot by a vengeful mob, blacks fled as their homes and families became targets for shooters and arsonists. Their property, crops and livestock soon fell into eager white hands. In the days and years that followed, long after the teenagers had been convicted and hanged, any black person entering the county was promptly terrorized into leaving.

Attempts at racial cleansing began long before the Jim Crow era, from the federal Indian Removal Act of 1830 through the systemic failures of Reconstruction. In Forsyth County, barring blacks altogether was the answer to any “race troubles.” This injustice would persist well beyond the reach of civil rights for decades, an ugly history kept silent—until now.

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For dedicated World War II readers comes an absorbing history of an unusual rescue mission in the closing days of the war in Europe. Elizabeth Letts, author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion, is an accomplished equestrian herself, and her love of horses shines through this complex story.

The author introduces readers not only to the key human players, such as Austrian Olympian Alois Podhajsky, director of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, and Hank Reed, a career officer who saw the last days of the U.S. cavalry, but also to a few of the horses caught up in the war: Witez, “the Polish Prince,” and Podhajsky’s faithful stallion, Africa.

While the daring, unexpected mission in which Col. Reed and his men (with the blessing and permission of his fellow polo player General George Patton) rescued more than 300 horses from a stud farm in Czechoslovakia in April 1945 forms the centerpiece of this history, Letts has a more ambitious goal in mind. Her narrative encompasses the role that thoroughbred horses played in Poland and Austria, shows how horse breeding was viewed by Gustav Rau, a German horse expert in the Third Reich and reveals the heartbreaking costs of conflict on individuals. 

Letts does an excellent job of bringing the various players to life, and The Perfect Horse includes a helpful list of characters, as well as an epilogue detailing what happened to some of the men and horses in the postwar years, including a touching interaction in 1950 between Podhajsky (who performed for Gen. Patton before his death), and Mrs. Patton.

Although not all the rescued horses ended up in their original homes, it was especially heartening to learn that Witez, the magnificent colt who was almost lost several times during the war, celebrated his 27th birthday in California in 1965 with a carrot cake. The Perfect Horse would be a perfect gift for horse lovers fascinated by history.

The “hidden figures” in the title of Margot Lee Shetterly’s new book will not be hidden much longer. This story of African-American female mathematicians who made a significant impact on the Space Race has already been optioned for a film due out in January. It’s a surprising story, even more so for how long it took to be told.

Shetterly profiles several of the women who, upon realizing that their math skills qualified them for a better living than they could make doing virtually anything else, pulled up stakes and decamped for Hampton, Virginia, in some cases leaving husbands and children behind. Once there, they attempted to make their way into the middle class even as they chafed at the restrictions placed on them by segregation. One of the “Colored Computers,” as they were called, drew the line at a cafeteria sign designating one table as theirs. Sick of the reminder, she pulled down the sign and shoved it in her purse. 

Working for the NACA, as it was then known, to design the bombers flown during World War II led to employment with NASA as the Cold War generated frantic U.S. efforts to surpass Russia. If Shetterly’s prose is sometimes dry, the material it covers is fascinating and loaded with victories large and small for these highly skilled and tenacious workers. 

Shetterly writes about Katherine Johnson, one of the “computers” described in near-mythic terms by a growing fan club, as representative of the America we aspire to be. Her description could apply to any of the women profiled in Hidden Figures: “She has been standing in the future for years, waiting for the rest of us to catch up.”

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.