2243 The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy (read 5 Nov 1989) This is one of the most impressive books I have ever read. The author is a Yale professor who was born in the north of England and educated at the University of Newcastle and at Oxford. The book covers Strategy and Economics since 1500 and the last two chapters ("Stability and Change in a Bipolar World, 1943-1980" and "To the 21st Century" I thought the most thought-provoking and well-reasoned of anything I have ever read. I would be extremely interested in what the author thinks of the very exciting things going on in Russia and East Europe today--a situation filled with unbelievable hope. The earlier part of the book was very heavy on economic history, but the book got better and better as I read along. Truly a great reading experience. ( )

This is not the end to all history ! ( )

I heard good things about Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, but it didn't live up to my expectations. By necessity, the book was very broad. Rather than assume existing knowledge of the Great Powers since 1500 C.E., Kennedy described each in depth alongside developments that led to the ebb and flow of power during 500 years. This produced a book heavy in historical detail and fact that could have been condensed for people even remotely familiar with the history of these years.

At the same time, as Kennedy admits, the book is decidedly Eurocentric. Thus, he presents a good description of the rise and fall of European great powers, but the constricted historical timeline means that larger trends may be absent. Will what caused the rise and fall of the Habsburg Empire be the same as what motivated the rise and fall of the Khanates or Rome? By confining his study to the 500 years of Europe's domination of the global, Kennedy limits a wider application of his concluding concepts about why Great Powers ultimately rise and fall.

With the above concerns about the book stated, TRaFotGP is useful if you want an analysis of what made nations gain prominence and then decline since 1500. It also makes a decent primer on European history during this era. Whereas books about Great Power politics from political scientists assume prior knowledge of most of what Kennedy discusses, TRaFotGP takes great lengths to bring the reader up to speed. Based on my own assumptions of how the world works, his reasoning is sound (looks largely at economic and military fluctuations to determine where power centers are located) and his predictions in the last chapter of the book, in the following 20 years since the edition I read, reflect reality (more regarding the USSR and China than Japan). ( )

Kennedy's thesis, much hailed on the left during the '80s, that "imperial overstreatch" of excess spending on arms being responsible for the decline of great powers has fallen in the dust, ( )