RE: the book.  I don't know.  It was just the first book I read which really laid out the facts confirming many suspicions I'd always had about identity & nationalism.  It focuses on mass media being used to connect people who prior to that had no reason to consider themselves connected, mass media used to promote the agenda of the nation-state, and the immagination required to keep that sense of nation/community afloat.  He talks about all of this in realtion to nationalism, but it might be interesting to see how we can apply these idea to "Europe," which, like the nation state, is an idea & a community currently under construction...

Here's a link that might explain all this better.    

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire