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The fate of Europe has recently turned into something of a Rorschach test for Americans. For the Trump administration and its allies, the continent represents a bastion of liberal decadence in terminal decline; the White House’s recent National Security Strategy warned of “civilizational erasure” in Europe and all but advocated for the dissolution of the European Union and the emergence of more populist parties and nationalistic member states. And yet for many Americans, Brussels represents the world’s last hope for steady and rules-based global leadership; many are cheering on its bid to strengthen its own defense and economic capabilities, and to punch back against Washington’s badgering.

But for many Europeans themselves, there is a cloud of pessimism that hangs over all this. They look jealously toward the United States and its higher rates of economic growth and world-beating technology companies, and gripe about the EU’s glacial pace of reform, lack of will, and divergent interests among member states. David Marsh writes Can Europe Survive? in this skeptical tradition. The former Financial Times European editor interviewed dozens of former officials to craft a well-written narrative history of key moments in Europe’s recent past—including the evolution of German-Russian relations, Brexit, and the European debt crisis. He paints an overall picture of a Europe buffeted by a cyclone of internal and external pressures.

The fate of Europe has recently turned into something of a Rorschach test for Americans. For the Trump administration and its allies, the continent represents a bastion of liberal decadence in terminal decline; the White House’s recent National Security Strategy warned of “civilizational erasure” in Europe and all but advocated for the dissolution of the European Union and the emergence of more populist parties and nationalistic member states. And yet for many Americans, Brussels represents the world’s last hope for steady and rules-based global leadership; many are cheering on its bid to strengthen its own defense and economic capabilities, and to punch back against Washington’s badgering.

Can Europe Survive? The Story of a Continent in a Fractured World, David Marsh, Yale University Press, 528 pp., $35, November 2025

But for many Europeans themselves, there is a cloud of pessimism that hangs over all this. They look jealously toward the United States and its higher rates of economic growth and world-beating technology companies, and gripe about the EU’s glacial pace of reform, lack of will, and divergent interests among member states. David Marsh writes Can Europe Survive? in this skeptical tradition. The former Financial Times European editor interviewed dozens of former officials to craft a well-written narrative history of key moments in Europe’s recent past—including the evolution of German-Russian relations, Brexit, and the European debt crisis. He paints an overall picture of a Europe buffeted by a cyclone of internal and external pressures.

The book contains some helpful reporting—particularly on the European debt crisis—but ends up unsatisfactorily dodging the exam question of “whither Europe?” It also offers a hurried treatment of the most pressing challenges facing Europe today. The focus on Germany’s fitful relationship with the Putin, Mario Draghi’s “whatever it takes” heroics to save the euro, and Brussels’ wayward relationship with the U.K. are historically interesting but feel less urgent as Europe stares down a volatile and often openly hostile Trump administration and a mercantilist China that is hollowing out European industry (a topic which Marsh treats only........

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