There’s an old proverb popularized by Mel Brooks that sums up “Fractured Continent,” William Drozdiak’s fine, eminently readable analysis of European politics that made The New York Times Most Notable 100 Books list for 2017. The proverb is: “Hope for the best, expect the worst.” But even if the “crises” explored by Drozdiak in 14 Western capitals, don’t constitute the worst in the continent’s 70-year-old attempt to achieve unity after World War II, they do exemplify a deepening division within and between European nations that seems to be moving inexorably to what the last chapter of Drozdiak’s book fatefully calls “Post-American Europe.” This is a book about Europe for Americans that is based on extensive travel, personal interviews and research. In different but related ways, Western democracies in the Euro zone are turning away from American concepts of leadership, feeling that America is turning away from them. And they’re finding that key ideas of European union – particularly