Mr Snyder's book is revisionist history of the best kind: in spare, closely argued prose, with meticulous use of statistics, he makes the reader rethink some of the best-known episodes in Europe's modern history.
Brush and paint never varied. His figures were roughly a centimetre tall, most made with two deliberate strokes of the brush, and allowed to fade away as his paint ran out, like the trailing tail of a comet.