From a narrow strip on the Atlantic edge of Europe, the Portuguese launched the age of discovery and linked the continents, a seafaring people of warmth, melancholy, and saudade.

Inventors of democracy, philosophy, and rational inquiry, heirs of Byzantium and survivors of Ottoman rule, the Greeks carry one of humanity longest and greatest stories across three thousand years.

At the heart of Europe, the Germans gave the world Bach, Kant, and Einstein, fell into the abyss of Nazism, and rebuilt themselves as a democracy that confronts its history. An honest, in-depth portrait.

Heirs of Romans and Visigoths, of the Muslims and Jews of al-Andalus, and of a global empire, the Spanish are a people forged at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and the Americas.