Piracy overseas and a taste for sugar and spice at home, combined with an unerring ability to vanquish rival European powers such as the Dutch and French in the dash for stash and status across the globe. But Ferguson is also alive to the peculiarities of British dominion: the manly and Christian civil service--less than a thousand strong--who ruled India, missionaries such as Livingstone, who explored and mapped as they preached and the barons of empire--Rhodes, Curzon, and Kitchener--who found in empire an outlet for their homoeroticism.

The book is brilliant and persuasive on trade and buccaneering before 1750, on India, on the late Victorian imperial mentalité, and on the two world wars, but less convincing on the empire of white settlement, and strangely silent on the most difficult colony of all, Ireland. In the end, Ferguson's penchant for polemic gets the upper-hand--the book closes with a controversial balance-sheet of the gains and losses of the British imperial experience--but he provides a riveting read nonetheless. --Miles Taylor

The Pity of War, with no pretensions to offering a grand narrative of the war, goes over its chosen questions like a polemical tract. As such it is immensely readable, well researched, and controversial. You may not end up agreeing with all of Ferguson's arguments, but that should not deter you from reading it. All of us need our deeply held views challenged from time to time, even if only to remind us why we've got them. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk

Among Ferguson's startling claims are:

· Nothing has done more to transform the world economy than war, yet wars themselves do not have primarily economic causes.

· The present age of economic globalization is coinciding--paradoxically--with political and military fragmentation.

· Financial crises are frequently caused by unforeseen political events rather than economic fluctuations.

· The relationship between prosperity and government popularity is largely illusory.

· Since political and economic liberalization are not self-perpetuating, the so-called triumph of democracy worldwide may be short-lived.

· A bold synthesis of political history and modern economic theory, The Cash Nexus will transform the landscape of modern history and draw challenging conclusions about the prospects of both capitalism and democracy.

But Ferguson and his distinguished collaborators (many of whom are also Oxford fellows) lodge some convincing counterfactuals of their own to counter this arguably blinkered notion, this "idea that events are in some way preprogrammed, so that what was, had to be." In addition to the what-ifs above, Ferguson and his comrades tackle eight questions in all, including "What if Charles I had avoided the Civil War?", "What if Home Rule had been enacted [in Ireland] in 1912?", and "What if Britain had 'stood aside' in August 1914?" Virtual History makes for a stimulating and intellectually rigorous trip, with Ferguson's own delightful afterword as the collection's crowning jewel, a brilliant--and often bitingly clever--timeline tying together all the threads from 1646 to 1996. --Paul Hughes

This book, the second of two volumes, is an authorised history. While members of the family read the manuscript, Ferguson said they did not censor his work. Ferguson details the Rothschilds' creation of the international bond market in the 1800s, through offices that stretched from London to Naples, and their eventual eclipse by American bankers like J. P. Morgan. He also explores the family's relationship to others in the Jewish community, the Rothschilds' climb up the social ranks and their role as adviser to kings and politicians during times of war and peace. The House of Rothschild is primarily an academic work with its footnotes, bibliography and quotations from Rothschild correspondence. The book is perhaps of most interest to fans of European political and economic history. But in the epilogue, where he describes the current resurgence of the House of Rothschild, Ferguson draws lessons about international finance that should interest those in the field today. --Dan Ring, Amazon.com

Henry Kaufman-an esteemed economist and statesman-is one of the most preeminent financial figures of the day, with a history of success from the 1980s, when his firm, Salomon Brothers, ruled the bond markets.

In The Road to Financial Reformation, Dr. Kaufman, who has spent a lifetime entrenched in the world of finance, provides an insightful account of the history and impact of post-World War II financial markets on the economy-what happened, how we got to where we are today, and what needs to be done. Drawing on his vast breadth of knowledge and experience, Kaufman reveals the mistakes that got us into this debacle, the consequences-as they have not been fully realized-and how to put our derailed economy back on track. This book details Dr. Kaufman's warnings and concerns expressed repeatedly throughout the last quarter century, and shows that what he predicted came to pass. <ul> <li>Provides an insightful account of the history and impact of post-World War II financial markets on the economy <li>Explores the erosion of credit ratings on corporate debt in the late 1980s and the rapid increase in financial concentration of institutions <li>Discusses the blinding faith in models that rely on historical data but fail to take into account economic and financial market structural changes

With his breadth of knowledge and experience, Kaufman details that this crisis was foreseeable (he saw it coming), and how we created this history-making financial crisis. He also explains the consequences still to come, and presents solutions on how we can recover and reform the markets.

The 1970s saw the breakdown of the postwar economic order and the advent of floating currencies and free capital movements. Non-state actors rose to prominence while the authority of the superpowers diminished. Transnational issues such as environmental protection, population control, and human rights attracted unprecedented attention. The decade transformed international politics, ending the era of bipolarity and launching two great revolutions that would have repercussions in the twenty-first century: the Iranian theocratic revolution and the Chinese market revolution.

The Shock of the Global examines the large-scale structural upheaval of the 1970s by transcending the standard frameworks of national borders and superpower relations. It reveals for the first time an international system in the throes of enduring transformations.

Die Prämisse, mit der er "alle ökonomisch-deterministischen Geschichtsauffassungen von gestern und heute in Zweifel ziehen will", die einen Kausalzusammenhang zwischen freier Marktwirtschaft und Demokratie herstellen, klingt jedenfalls eher banal: "Die Grundannahme dieses Werkes lautet, dass "... miteinander im Konflikt liegende Impulse, nennen wir sie der Einfachheit halber Sex, Gewalt und Macht, einzeln und gemeinsam wichtiger sein können als Geld, als das ökonomische Motiv." Inspiriert von Thomas Carlyles in den 1840er Jahren geprägten Ausdruck "cash nexus" spürt Ferguson in Auseinandersetzung mit Francis Fukayama, dem zufolge Kapitalismus und Demokratie die "Doppelhelix" der modernen Welt darstellen, und in Konfrontation zur neoklassischen Schablone vom Homo oeconomicus in seinen Streifzügen durch die Geschichte den neuzeitlichen Verflechtungen zwischen Wirtschaft und Politik nach.

Seine Schlussfolgerung lautet weniger "money makes the world go round", sondern dass vielmehr politische Ereignisse, allen voran Kriege, ideologische und religiöse Konflikte für die zentralen Institutionen des modernen (Wirtschafts-)Lebens konstituierend seien.

Hängt man seine Bedeutung tiefer, hat es der Autor zugegebenermaßen dennoch verstanden, ein gut recherchiertes, vortrefflich geschriebenes Buch vorzulegen, das sicherlich seine originellen Seiten hat und auch mit mancherlei Vorurteilen aufräumt. --Roland Detsch