It's May 1950, just before the now-famous Robert Schuman Declaration. Schuman was the French Foreign Minister, who brokered friendly Franco-German Relations after 3 large-scale wars between the two European powers within 70 years brought havoc to Europe regularly. A year after the German Federal Republic (West) was established with Anglo-Franco-American agreement in 1949, the 1950 Declaration, which included the Benelux countries as well, created a West European Customs & Trade Zone. They later added a few more countries to become the European Economic Community, then after two enlargements in the 1980s and 1990s became the EU - the European Union, now expanded significantly larger in area, population, and in economic unity. In the first decade of this century, the EU has again been enlarged twice - the last in 2007 adding Romania and Bulgaria. This story of the EU's origins is told through the chance encounter of a young couple: Jean Monnet, a journalist from the Stuttgarter Zeitung,...