Americans are writing Europe off–and apparently for good reason. The last several months have seen the European Union stagger from one crisis to another. After barely passing the Lisbon Treaty–which amended the EU’s fundamental texts in order to streamline its institutional structures–the EU soon found itself in the throes of its current crisis over the ...

W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s comic history of England, 1066 and All That, talks about nineteenth-century British Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone’s efforts to solve the Irish Question—the puzzle of what to do with rebellious Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. According to Sellar and Yeatman, every time that Gladstone ...