We tend to think of Europe's past as the history of present-day countries, but Europe's history is littered with kingdoms, duchies, empires, and republics that are now gone, but once dominated our maps. Take, for example, the Empire of Aragon, which once dominated the western Mediterranean; the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the largest country in Europe; and the successive kingdoms (and a duchy) of Burgundy, whose history is now largely half-remembered or half-forgotten. How many Britons know that Glasgow was founded by the Welsh in an era before England and Scotland? How many of us will remember the former Soviet Union in a few generations? Will our own United Kingdom, too, become a distant memory? As in his earlier acclaimed books, Europe: A History and The Isles, Norman Davies strives to disrupt our established sense of familiarity and encourage us to look and think anew.