Books by Paul Kennedy

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE Paul Kennedy's international bestseller is a sweeping account of five hundred years of fluctuating economic muscle and military might.

From Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, one of the most acclaimed history books of recent decades, Engineers of Victory is a new account of how the tide was turned against the Nazis by the Allies in the Second World War. In January 1943 Churchill and Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met in Casablanca to review the western Allies' war aims and strategy. They realised that to attain their ultimate aim of 'unconditional surrender' they would have to achieve some formidable objectives - win control of the Atlantic sea-lanes and command of the air over the whole of West-Central Europe, work out how to land on an enemy-held shore so that Continental Europe could be retaken, how to blunt the Nazi blitzkrieg that a successful invasion would undoubtedly provoke, and finally how to 'hop' across the islands of the Pacific to assault the Japanese mainland. Eighteen months later on, as Paul Kennedy writes, 'these operational aims were either accomplished or close to being so.' The history of the Second World War is often told as a grand narrative. The focus of this book, by contrast, is on the problem-solvers - Major-General Perry Hobart, who invented the 'funny tanks' which flattened the curve on the D-Day beaches; Flight Lieutenant Ronnie Harker 'the man who put the Merlin in the Mustang'; Captain 'Johnny' Walker, the convoy captain who worked out how to sink U-boats with a 'creeping barrage'. The result is a fresh perspective on the greatest, conflict in human history.Paul Kennedy is one of the world's best-selling and most influential historians. He is the author or editor of nineteen books, including The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which has been translated into over twenty languages, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, The Parliament of Man and the now classic Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery.

Paul Kennedy's classic naval history, now updated with a new introduction by the authorThis acclaimed book traces Britain's rise and fall as a sea power from the Tudors to the present day. Challenging the traditional view that the British are natural 'sons of the waves', he suggests instead that the country's fortunes as a significant maritime force have always been bound up with its economic growth. In doing so, he contributes significantly to the centuries-long debate between 'continental' and 'maritime' schools of strategy over Britain's policy in times of war. Setting British naval history within a framework of national, international, economic, political and strategic considerations, he offers a fresh approach to one of the central questions in British history. A new introduction extends his analysis into the twenty-first century and reflects on current American and Chinese ambitions for naval mastery.'Excellent and stimulating' Correlli Barnett'The first scholar to have set the sweep of British Naval history against the background of economic history' Michael Howard, Sunday Times'By far the best study that has ever been done on the subject ... a sparkling and apt quotation on practically every page' Daniel A. Baugh, International History Review'The best single-volume study of Britain and her naval past now available to us' Jon Sumida, Journal of Modern History

Vampire Capitalism will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, social theory, globalisation studies, development studies, political economy, geography, politics and social policy.

When Hugh Laracy reviewed this book in The Journal of Pacific History in 1978 he rightly described it as the 'product of monumental research'. Exploring the diplomatic negotiations that led to the division of the Samoan Islands between Germany, Great Britain and the USA in 1899, it is a significant study of international relations between the three late nineteenth century super powers. The Pacific Islands were pawns in an international diplomatic chess game that involved Britain's early, but often unwilling, acquisition of Pacific territory; Germany's scramble to get its share to bolster its prestige and trading interests; and the USA's late, but insistent, demands for its place in the Pacific. What emerges in The Samoan Tangle is a detailed study of late nineteenth century international relations that reminds us how often the Pacific Islands have been used to satisfy great power plays on the other side of the globe.

In the course of the twentieth century, there occurred a development unique in the story of humankind. States, which had defined themselves from Thucydides to Bismarck by their claims to sovereign independence, gradually came together to create international organizations to promote peace, curb aggression, regulate diplomatic affairs, devise an international code of law, encourage social development and foster prosperity. The emergence of this network of global governance was not straightforward and the debate about its role is just as heated today as it was generations ago. In this long-awaited new book, Paul Kennedy, probably the best-selling historian now living, examines this key development in the history of our century. Beginning with the earliest forms of international organization, he goes on to trace the creation and changing role of the UN in the postwar era, and finally suggests how, in the face of new threats to security and the continued vigour of at least some nation states, the institution will need to change over the course of the twenty-first century, arguing that we all share the responsibility to make the only world organization we possess work as well as possible.