"Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada"--T.p. verso.

National pasts in Europe and East Asia -- The scale and pace of change recalled -- Available lessons : private memories and wider European agendas -- Europe : general crisis, collapse, and recovery -- Uncomfortable lessons : the European Union and the USA, 1989/91-2008 -- Reading the ongoing changes : European identity -- Sweeping change in East Asia : political leaders and the experience of violence -- East Asia : general crisis, collapse, and national development -- Contested compromises : national pasts in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Bangkok -- Japan/China : national pasts and the reordering of East Asia -- Europe and East Asia : intermingled pasts and changing identities -- Afterword: War is failure.