Overview

This third volume of Conrad Black's magnificent series opens with the assumption of direct rule by Louis XIV of France and covers the great sweep of history with the rise of Russia, the decline of the Ottomans, the wars of the Spanish and Austrian successions, the Age of Discovery, the rise of India, China, and Japan, colonization of the New World, the Seven-Years' War, the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic wars, the founding of the United States through the American Civil War, the Crimean War, the unification of Germany and Italy, and the decline of Pax Britannica prior to the start of World War I. Writing with his usual panache, Lord Black continues to delight his readers with his sagacious assessments of historical figures and events. He insists, and these volumes demonstrate, that history is shaped by individual decisions in specific times and places, and that human beings are active participants in the historical movements of the world, not passive victims of blind social forces. Many intriguing personalities come to life in these pages as our modern world slowly comes into view. This is history for the history-lover and is also a mighty reference work to be returned to again and again. A must have for all home libraries to pass down to future generations that they may contemplate the doings of their ancestors, draw strength from their courage and tenacity, and revive hope in the certain knowledge that human society continues to progress despite the hardship and setbacks which often accompany it.

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9781966833208

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Reviews

Advance Praise for The Strategic and Political History of the World: Our modern Gibbon, in this volume Conrad Black takes the reader from the age of Louis XIV to the dawn of World War I with erudition, humour, insight and immense readability. In the course of the gripping story, he stumbles upon the hugely uplifting (and surprisingly Whiggish) fact that Mankind's ability to govern itself is improving, albeit in fits and starts. -Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny Lord Black's ambitious work is presented with elegance and erudition. -Dr. Henry Kissinger Comprehensive world histories often require collaborative teams of scholarly specialists. Contemporary academic historians naturally assume that there can no longer be any Gibbons, Grotes, Mommsens, Bancrofts, or Prescotts still to be found. Conrad Black, however, is a rare historian who has undertaken a narrative, multivolume history of world civilization, and thereby restored the value of that grand classical tradition. This task, of course, demands prodigious research of primary and secondary sources, facility in a number of languages, and a lifetime of wide reading and publication. Such a monumental work is impossible without a fertile imagination, common and good sense, scholarly rigor, a masterful prose style, and unrivaled discipline. In all these areas Black excels. The result is a landmark work of universal history that will capture the public imagination while earning the respect and admiration of scholars for many decades to come. -Victor Davis Hanson, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, author of Carnage and Culture and The Second World Wars

Author Information

Lord Conrad Black is a Canadian-born British peer, and former publisher of The London Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, and founder of Canada's National Post. Historian, biographer, columnist, and best-selling author, he is a regular contributor to numerous publications, podcasts, radio, and television In the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Lord Black has published comprehensive histories of both Canada and the United States, as well as authoritative biographies of Maurice Duplessis, and presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon, and Donald J. Trump. He is a dual-citizen (Canada and the U.K.) and was named a member of the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour in 2001. His latest work is The Political and Strategic History of the World in four volumes of which this is the third volume.

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