I have read in the past year a several books on European history, I will only say, Europe has been a mess up until after WWII. From WWII until now is probably the longest period of peace that Europe has ever known.
Then The Plantagenets, very interesting, there was so much in that book I will have to read it again.
Just finished a book on Ancient Greece, really good read. I will say this, while Greece may have given us the concept of democracy and from the Spartans, a socialistic type ideology, the practice of both were for a very select few.
I am now on Babylon, it begins to start, what some believe, is the beginning to civilization. In the middle of that book right now.