Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World. (Penguin Celebrations)

by NiallFerguson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.16

  This astoundingly successful, superbly reviewed book vividly recreates the excitement, brutality and adventure of the British Empire. Ferguson' most revolutionary and popular work, Empire is a major reinterpretation of the British Empire as one of the world's greatest modernising forces. It shows on a vast canvas how the British Empire in the 19th Century spearheaded real globalisation with steampower, telegraphs, guns, engineers, missionaries and millions of settlers.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.16

  Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity. The most brilliant British historian of his generation...Ferguson examines the roles of pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts in the creation of history's largest empire...he writes with splendid panache...and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit. (Andrew Roberts). Dazzling...wonderfully readable. (New York Review of Books). A remarkably readable precise of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all. (Jan Morris). Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence. (Sunday Times).