The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) Paperback – July 21, 2008

I am rating the book 5 star because of its comprehensive review of a large subject, the European economy from 1945 until 2007. However, I want to warn anyone getting the Kindle version that the ebook version of this book was done poorly. It is a facsimile not a dynamic ebook. In other words, you cannot change the font size. You get a tall, narrow book page on your iPad.What is good about this book is that it is comprehensive, and, more importantly, the author highlights one of the prime differences between the US and EU. He describes this as "extensive" economics for the EU which means exploitation of off the shelf technologies. Whereas the US economy is based on "intensive" economics which means exploiting technical change. The author (while not from a scientific or engineering background) realizes the importance of technological change and the fact that it is discontinuous. One great factoid he mentions is that Russia had 200,000 computers when a western nation of similar size would have had 20 million. And the economic results show.Most economists are forever stuck in the statistics of the past without understanding the fundamentals (like technological change) that underly these statistics. The book is refreshing in that respect. However, the author (like nearly all economists) does not realize the importance of aggressive marketing and marketing research. Nevertheless, I would give this book a 5 star.What the book is good at is tracing the evolution of the EU and EZ since Europe was in ruins after WWII (Marshall Plan etc.) through the various European Community efforts and onto the Euro. Sadly, I think that a good portion of the Eurozone will go belly up because of their reliance on extensive economics (i.e., Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, Italy; hopefully Ireland will survive).

The book is very well written, but was definitely a heavy read. I am not that well schooled on economic and political theory, so I really didn't enjoy it. I would recommend Global Capitalism by Frieden instead.

I strongly recommend this book if you are interested in the subject. I found it to be easy to read and an excellent synthesis of modern scholarship on Europe's post-WWII economic growth. The bibliography is also excellent. I used the book to review for my comprehensive exam in European Political Economy and found it immeasurably useful--in fact it was by far the best thing I read to prepare.

It's a great book that reviews the european history since 1945 by country cases and by economic performance blocks. Fits great in my phD.

Extremely well written and informative book, ideal for modern history students.

It's hard to convey how formidable this book must have been to write. There's really nothing else like it

it is a very good textbook on European economic history. it is good for students of political economy to use as a handbook