Jean Monnet's memoirs cover a breath-taking sweep of time which witnessed some of history's greatest upheavals - through two World Wars and formidable economic hardship to slow, painstaking recovery and the founding of a new and necessary political unity among states which had been enemies for centuries. Monnet was at the vanguard of those European thinkers who identified Franco-German cooperation as the foundation of a peaceful and prosperous Europe, and his writings provide a compelling account of the birth pangs of the new Europe from within.