The Rise & Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change & Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 by Paul M. Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book covers from the Ottoman Empire to The Cold War; roughly 500 years in as many pages. This brisk pace makes the mostly military history come across like a zoetrope; animation through rapid motion. The approach to war is one of the logistics over strategy; technology and foreign cash reserves factor in more than geography and division count. The final chapter looking ahead is almost quanit as the 1987 work still has to consider East Germany and the USSR. However, even then there were still relevant topics: Latin America's drugs into the US, the rise of China, America's uncertain future as superpower, and the rise of Asian economies like aging Japan.
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