The Best Books of 2011 on Western Europe

This magisterial work chronicles in horrifying detail the mass murder of civilians by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany from 1930 to 1945 in the "bloodlands" that lay between them: Poland, the Baltic republics, Belarus, and the Ukraine.

In world politics, idealistic schemes often begin with high hopes and end with disappointment. Such has been the case with Europe's response to recent genocides. So, also, is the experience of this book's author in applying trendy social science to this issue.

The EU has developed an adversarial rights-based legal system much like the U.S. one. Kelemen, a political scientist, argues that this is not because Europe copied the United States but because the two have faced similar challenges.