Scenic Tour

Scenic Tour Geert Mak pays contemporary witness to the last European century IN EUROPE: TRAVELS THROUGH THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BY GEERT MAK NEW YORK: PANTHEON. 896 PAGES. $35.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a European Union summit meeting for the first time in nineteen years. Wandering through the bowels of the new Council of Ministers building in Brussels, I felt suddenly like that great Dutch-American Rip Van Winkle. He woke after a twentyyear nap in the Catskill Mountains to find that the thirteen British colonies had become the United States. Returning to my old hunting grounds in Brussels after nearly two decades, I was confronted with a bewildering New Europe.

The …