In the wake of World War II, Europe was in ruins, with its cities destroyed, its economies crippled, its societies ripped apart. The moral question lingered, too: how had the continent done this to itself? For years afterward, Europeans—politicians, refugees, poets, religious leaders, and revolutionaries—tried to make sense of what had happened, and to forge a new concept of civilization. As Paul Betts details here, they wrestled with questions ranging from the legacy of colonialism to workplace etiquette, and their solutions still shape our world today.