Morally bankrupt and startlingly ignorant, most offensively when Roberts is putting forward the truthful elements of where Enlightenment reason bests Middle East irrational superstition but doing so with a philosophy at best alarming, at worst absurd!

Perhaps a more in-depth review once my soul calms; in the meantime, Professor Stephen Howe sums up my case: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-history-of-the-e.... ( )

An apologist for Pinochet. Nuff said. ( )

4843. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, by Andrew Roberts (read 1 Aug 2011) This is a book filled with inaccuracies and special pleading. Early on I realized the author was not very concerned about accuracy when he said the Lusitania was an American ship. Nor could I admire his point of view when he spent about six pages trying to excuse General Dyer in 1919 in India ordering his troops to fire upon an unarmed crowd for ten minutes, killing 379 people.. He does have some things right--he knows that FDR was the greatest American President of the 20th century. But he spends many pages trying to show that Bush did the right thing in starting the Iraq War even though he acknowledges that said war had nothing to do with 9/11 and that Saddam had no WMD's. There are a lot better histories to read than this book., and I feel I wasted my time even though I read it to the end, since I usually finish books I start. ( )

Brit jingoism. ( )

A nice summary of the 20th century. However, Roberts is a little too easy on some of the mistakes of the USA/Britian. He whitewashed many of the major mistakes in Iraq. Also, while being very harsh on Clinton, he completely ignores Rwanda, which is very odd. He cannot stand the IRA (perhaps understandably), and makes note of every instance when Ireland was not aligned with the English speaking peoples. Also, he refers to several British related incidents that I don't completely understand, not really understanding their government/party history.

However, he makes a strong case that our way of life only exists due to our constant protection of it (from enemies both foreign and domestic). I think he is correct in many of his defenses of the "errors" of the USA/Britian in the last century. It's his treatment of Iraq that most disturbs me - maybe because it's so fresh.

All in all a good book if you know little about the 20th century outside of WWII and your current lifetime (like me).

Favorite Lines/Sections:
- "Mr. Churchill is, if one my use the phrase, ancestor ridden, and too addicted to history in general." - Alfred Stirling (246)
- "There is no cause so vile that some human being will not be found to defend it." - Norman Douglas (213)
- St. Paul's Cathedral (285)
- Churchill's Harvard speech (329)
- FDR's 4th Inaugural (357)
- "Standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses" - Churchill (433)
- "The duty of politician is to educate the people, not to obey them." - Mandell Creighton (623)
- "The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward." - Churchill (637)
- "A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own." - George Canning (644) ( )