"How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat?until the cycle begins again. Revealing a piece of forgotten history, Stephen Kinzer transports us to the dawn of the twentieth century, when the United States first found itself with the chance to dominate faraway lands. That prospect thrilled some Americans. It horrified...

"In a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes-from the devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050-has produced a relentless successionof rising empires and fading world orders"--

The enormous influence of the British Empire cannot be escaped. It has shaped the world in countless ways, repopulating continents, carving out nations, imposing its language, technology and values. For perhaps two centuries its existence, expansion, and final collapse could be seen as the single largest determinant of historical events.

"Featuring 12 explosive new chapters, this new edition of the New York Times bestseller brings the story of Economic Hit Men up-to-date and, chillingly, home to the U. S.--but it also gives us hope and the tools to fight back"--Provided by publisher.

"In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine. While the world watched in outrage, this blatant violation of national sovereignty was only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the...

"Our world was made on and by the Silk Roads. For millennia it was here that East and West encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas and cultures, the birth of the world's great religions, the appetites for foreign goods that drove economies and the growth of nations. From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the growth of Greece and Rome to the depredations by the Mongols and the Black Death to the Great Game...

"American Midwest to Shanghai, from London to Tokyo, the 1850s was a decade of extraordinary change and upheaval: the world economy expanded fivefold; millions of families emigrated to the ends of the earth to carve out lives in the wilderness; new technologies revolutionized how people communicated; and railways cut across great continents. Steam ships, telegraphs, photographs and pharmaceuticals all proliferated. In Heyday, an epic story of global...