Glenda Sluga

For a few years now, it's dawned on me that I really need to learn more European history from 1814 to 1848, and this appeared to be the ideal book with which to start. While I wouldn't say that this book was a waste of time, it does have a number of problems. On one hand, Sluga wants to reconstruct the mentality in play with the creation of the Concert of Europe. On the other, she wants to recreate a period where woman were seen as essential facilitators in foreign relations, before professionalism swept them away. I'm skeptical that Sluga really accomplished either mission, but she did better with detailing the feminine hand in diplomacy. Not helping matters is that Sluga has an addiction to run-on sentences that make for a tedious reading experience; the editor should have quashed this tendency out of the gate. I also suspect that the expectation is that the reader will bring to the book a better understanding of the relevant personalities and issues than I have.… (meer)