The essential features of a scholarly book written for "the general public" are lucid yet erudite prose, a simply stated thesis, and a subject that is relevant and comprehensible to the lives of educated people. Paul Kennedy's book became a best-seller during the late 1980s because it followed this formula perfectly, providing its readers with an entertaining and informative look at the geopolitical history of the last 500 years.

Kennedy, a native of England who has been a professor at Yale since 1983, asserts in Rise and Fall a fairly obvious thesis -- that economics, geography, and technology have a defining effect on the balance of political power -- but writes about it in such depth, detail, and clarity that the reader can still walk away having learned something important.

Kennedy makes two broad arguments: "that there exists a dynamic for change, driven chiefly by economic and technological developments, which then impact upon social structures, political systems, military power, and the position of individual states and empires" and "that [the] uneven pace of economic growth has had crucial long-term impacts upon the relative military power and strategical position of the members of the states system." To support these arguments, Kennedy presents the examples of Habsburg Spain, Bourbon France, Victorian England, and Wilhelmian Germany, showing how these empires rose and fell in large part as a result both of changes in the relative economic and technological strengths of themselves and their rivals and of circumstances requiring these empires to over-exert themselves defending their interests.

Throughout the book, Kennedy illustrates his general points with helpful tables and maps as well as with illuminative specific examples. He does a masterful job of including just enough specifics to make his case without bogging down his narrative in the process. Kennedy is also refreshingly frank about the limits of both his data and his theories, a humility that is too often lacking in expository writings.

In Rise and Fall, Paul Kennedy manages the rare feat of writing a scholarly work that is also a ripping good yarn, and I recommend it without qualification.

Review posted: 18 August 1998