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This was an absolutely wonderful read! Niall Ferguson, author of this book's sequel, "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire," gives his readers a crash-course in British imperial history starting with the English privateering raids on the Spanish empire and ending with the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. Ferguson's main point is that, all things considered, the British Empire was a good thing for the world. And, it must be said, he makes a very strong case for this using economic, political and historical analysis to bolster his case along with some thumping good tales. But this is not a jingoistic or details-oriented book. Quite the opposite in fact! This book was written with the general reader in mind and is the most accessible book on British history I have ever read. Also, rather than avoid the empire's darker incidents, he uses them as evidence that when the British did bad things, bad things happened not just to the native people (tragic enough as that is), but to the empire as a whole. A reasonable point to make when one considers how poor policies in Iraq nearly screwed the U.S. over internationally as well as domestically (read Thomas Ricks' "Fiasco" for details). There were a few nit-picky issues I have with him, but I feel that this is great book that makes a far better case for, weird as it may sound, a Liberal American empire than his sequel to this book does.