This book offers a comprehensive history of European integration. The special role of the United States in this process of integration, and the expansion and evolution of the European Union, is critically analysed. In this compelling new book Ivan Berend places different issues currently facing the European Union - further enlargement, migration, anti-EU populism, economic crisis, Covid-19 - in the context of a sweeping history of the idea and reality of European integration since World War II.Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, Associate Professor of History, University of Lausanne Ivan Berend's magisterial account of the "short" history of European integration makes landfall at just the right moment. As the EU faces a "perfect storm"-probably the most dire succession of crises since its founding- Berend's economic and political history of integration provides a compelling account of the EU's evolution from a trade community to a political union. This book is a true tour de force, and can rightly be considered the last word on the Cold War origins of the EU.? Bojan Bugaric, Professor of Law, University of Sheffield