Counterfactual notions like this occur throughout the book, though they hold little value either as conjecture or informed speculation. Obviously, every aspect of history (and not just in Europe) might be radically different had such-and-such not gone the way it did. For the most part, however, Kershaw moves adroitly through decades of turmoil in Europe. He’s skilled at connecting 20^th-century leaders with our current crop.

Drugs and alcohol played an active part throughout Stone’s work. This reflected his own experiences with intoxicants of one sort or another. It also found expression in the idea that mind-bending drugs and distorted perception might lead to a higher truth or to abject tragedy. “It’s a mess when everybody’s high,” he writes in “A Higher Horror of the Whiteness.” “I liked it better when the weirdest thing around was me.”