Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

by NiallFerguson (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $12.59

  Is America the new world empire? Presidents from Lincoln to Bush may have denied it but, as Niall Ferguson's brilliant and provocative book shows, the US is in many ways the greatest imperial power of all time. What's more, it always has been an empire, expanding westwards throughout the nineteenth century and rising to global dominance in the twentieth. But is today's American colossus really equipped to play Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on its shoulders? The United States, Ferguson reveals, is an empire running on empty, weakened by chronic defecits of money, manpower and political will. When the New Rome falls, he warns, its collapse may come from within. One of the timeliest and most topical books to have appeared in recent years. (Literary Review). Yet another tour de force from a writer who displays all his usual gifts of forceful polemic, unconventional intelligence and elegant prose...guaranteed to spark fierce debate. (Irish Times). A bravura exploration of why Americans are not cut out to be imperialists but nonetheless have an empire. Vigorous, substantive, and worrying. (Timothy Garton Ash).

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.27

  Is America an empire? Certainly not, according to the U.S. government. Despite the conquest of two sovereign states in as many years, despite the presence of more than 750 military installations in two-thirds of the world's countries and despite his stated intention to extend the benefits of freedom ... to every corner of the world, George W. Bush maintains that America has never been an empire . We don't seek empires, insists Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. We're not imperialistic. Nonsense, says Niall Ferguson. In Colossus he argues that in both military and economic terms America is nothing less than the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Just like the British Empire a century ago, the United States aspires to globalize free markets, the rule of law and representative government. In theory it's a good project, says Ferguson. Yet Americans shy away from the long-term commitments of manpower and money that are indispensable if rogue regimes and failed states really are to be changed for the better. This, he argues, is an empire with an attention deficit disorder, imposing ever more unrealistic timescales on its overseas interventions. Worse, it's an empire in denial - a hyperpower which simply refuses to admit the scale of its global responsibilities. And this chronic myopia may also apply to American domestic politics. When overstretch comes, he warns, it will come from within - and it will reveal that the American Colossus has more than merely feet of clay.