Studies in European history

"For over a century Spain controlled the greatest empire the world had ever seen, and its collapse provoked, both then as it does now, a range of analyses over which there has been little agreement. In the second edition of this text, Henry Kamen asks: was the Golden Age of Spain in the sixteenth century actually an illusion? By examining some of the key issues involved, Kamen offers a balanced discussion of this fundamental question."--Jacket.

In the eighteenth century, a daring and dramatically new intellectual and cultural movement arose in western Europe. Of its many characteristics - audacity, wit, an interest in the practical and the applied - none was more important than its critical, biting edge. This opinionated movement called for "enlightenment" for new thinking about once unquestioned truths and eventually for new actions. Best characterized by the metaphor of light, the Enlightenment has retained the name it acquired early in the eighteenth century.