Colossus - Niall Ferguson

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