Niall Ferguson

The Pity of War More than any other event, World War I made the 20th century what it has been. Now as the 20th century draws to a close, 80 years after the armistice of 11 November 1918, the time is right for a radical reassessment of the Great War. In this book aimed at appeal to appeal not only to students but also to the general reader, Niall Ferguson explodes many of the myths surrounding the war. Подробнее
Civilization: The West and the Rest If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople. By contrast, England would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe — Aragon, Castile, France, Portugal and Scotland — would have seemed little better. As for fifteenth-century North America, it was an anarchic wilderness compared with the realms of the Aztecs and Incas. The idea that the West would come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. And yet it happened. What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six 'killer applications' that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy. «Civilization» takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world — from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history. Подробнее
The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wrong? How did we do this to ourselves? The War of the World comes up with compelling, fascinating answers. It is Niall Ferguson’s masterpiece. Подробнее
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call it what you like, it matters now more than ever. In «The Ascent of Money», Niall Ferguson shows that finance is the foundation of all human progress and the lifeblood of history. From the cash injection that funded the Italian Renaissance to the stock market bubble that sparked the French Revolution, from the bonds that fuelled Britain's war effort to the Wall Street Crash and today's meltdown, this is the story of boom and bust as it's never been told before. Whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's no better time to understand the ascent of money. Подробнее
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World Niall Ferguson recreates the excitement, brutality and adventure of the British Empire, showing on a vast canvas how the British Empire in the 19th century spearheaded real globalization with steampower, telegraphs, guns, engineers, missionaries and millions of settlers. Подробнее
Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire From one of «Time's» «100 People Who Shape Our World» comes a provocative examination of the American way of empire. Подробнее

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