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This is an utterly engrossing and entertaining history of the British Empire. Ferguson is a terrific storyteller and his narrative has scarcely a dull sentence. He emphasizes the empire's rise much more than its fall, which is confined to the final chapter. The six chapters cover commodity markets, labour markets, culture, government, capital markets, and warfare, "or, in rather more human terms, the role of" pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers, and bankrupts.

The book is punctuated with small but vivid details, such as how George Nathaniel Curzon, Viceroy of India and "a most insufferable person," had been "entrusted as a child to a deranged governess" who "periodically forced [him] to parade through the village wearing a large conical cap bearing the words 'liar', 'sneak' and 'coward'." In the northern-Indian hill country to escape the summer heat, Curzon and his wife found the Viceroy's Lodge "odiously vulgar." 'I keep trying not to be disappointed,' confessed Lady Curzon. 'A Minneapolis millionaire would revel in it.'" And how the British economist John Maynard Keynes - "everyone was in awe of his great brain" - in Washington to arrange American financing for the British in World War II, "disliked the way American lawyers tried to blind him with jargon - speaking (as Keynes put it) 'Cherokee'. He loathed the way politicians would answer phone calls in the middle of meetings with him."

Choose this Penguin edition over the Basic Books edition - in spite of its lower price, it has color plates and the latter has black and white.