Regular marked price: $35.00Discount Price: $23.10
Cost Savings: $11.90 (34%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.09712410824
EAN num: 9781596915312
ISBN number: 1596915315
Label: Bloomsbury Press
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 592
Printing Date: May 13, 2008
Publishing house: Bloomsbury Press
Release Date: May 13, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 65742
Studio: Bloomsbury Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A sweeping, brilliantly vivid history of the sudden end of the British Empire and the moment when America became a world superpower—published on the sixtieth anniversary of Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine.
“I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” Winston Churchill’s famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously affirmed his loyalty to the worldwide institution that he had served for most of his life. Britain fought and sacrificed on a global scale to defeat Hitler and his allies—and won. Yet less than five years after Churchill’s defiant speech, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. As the sun set on Britain’s empire, the age of America as world superpower dawned.
How did this rapid change of fortune come about? Peter Clarke’s book is the very first to analyze the abrupt transition from Rule Britannia to Pax Americana. His swift-paced narrative makes superb use of letters and diaries to provide vivid portraits of the figures around whom history pivoted: Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and a host of lesser-known figures through whom Clarke brilliantly shows the human dimension of epochal events.
Clarke traces the intimate and conflicted nature of the “special relationship,” showing how Roosevelt and his successors were determined that Britain must be sustained both during the war and after, but that the British Empire must not; and reveals how the tension between Allied war aims, suppressed while the fighting was going on, became quickly apparent when it ended. The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire is a captivating work of popular history that shows how the events that followed the war reshaped the world as profoundly as the conflict itself.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
The Indian sub-continent and Palestine were particularly effected by the decline of the British Empire during the second World War. Peter Clarke's detailed history does not point to solutions but provides background: ". . . these are problems which we can understand better if we know a bit more history."
This is a book for those seeking an in-depth explanation of the political and diplomatic processes that led to the post-war situation. It describes the relationships among the allied leadership and their successors and the thinking that shaped the world in the second half of the last century.
Rated by buyers -
I have read several histories of this period, all purporting to be the definitive account of the events which conspired to occasion the dissolution of the British Empire. This is the best, both in terms of the relatively short, but entirely adequate, time period the author selects for discussion, and for his obvious but never intrusive mastery of both his subject matter and the English language. I would single out his analysis of the initially nation-saving, but ultimately calamitous, innovation of Lend-Lease as by far the most insightful and comprehensive I have ever read. And speaking of reading, I tend toward speed, but this is a "rich" book which makes the reader want to slow down and savor both the writing and the author's observations. Clarke can turn a phrase with the best of them but resists any inclination to be too clever and thus his (often alliterative) witticisms and asides are both surprising and delightfully refreshing. With this book, Clarke joins at least my select group of historians who are also masterful writers, a list which includes Roy Porter, Christopher Hibbert, Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama; he is that good. Indeed, he could have taken 1000 pages to describe the 1000 days and it would have been fine with me. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers 
-
This is a great book that gives a view of WW II from the British point of view. Clarke explains the reasons for the breakup of the British Empire and that in order to win the war the breakup was inevitable.
Rated by buyers -
Clarke has combed through the diaries of some of the men who "were there" when the British Empire, victorious over the Third Reich in WWII, nevertheless, lost its Empire--notably India but also Palestine. The reader should be familiar with the overall history and the players; (Clarke can be frustrating using multiple names, nicknames and official titles for the players--nearly like reading a Russian novel!) Interesting insight into Churchill, less so for Roosevelt and Truman, even less so for Stalin. The roles of "lesser lights" in forging the post-war world (the associate ministers and cabinet officers) are made, if not brighter, a bit clearer. A good read. Reading this book while Obama was making his "magical mystery tour" of Iraq and Europe brought home the danger his lack of experience--good intentions are not enough--the men who "were there" after WWII show us the absolute necessity of knowing what you are doing in international relations.
Rated by buyers -
This book is a splendid achievement. In it, Peter Clarke, former Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, examines the last thousand days of the British Empire (1944-1947) in its personal as well as in its economic dimensions. Demonstrating a comprehensive grasp of the facts and macaulayan narrative skill, Clarke shows us with what astonishing rapidity the Empire was given up, once the elites had grasped the hopelessness of the situation. Though he describes the birth of Israel and an independent India, his focus is on the troubled relations between Britain and the US in this period of world-historical transition. The timing of this book's publication was apt (2007 in the UK edition), roughly coinciding with Britain's final payment on its war debt to the US (December 2006).
Clarke sketches Churchill and FDR with light, economical strokes, bringing them to life in a way that no historian has done heretofore and showing them for the very first time as, to use his phrase, "fully plausible human beings." He displays a quite remarkable capacity for stepping into the shoes his actors, major and minor, and seeing the world through their eyes. His prose is a delight--precise diction and wonderfully varied rhythms. Flashes of wit catch the reader unawares and the author's gift for phrase-making relieves a long journey (about 526 pages). It cannot be said of Clarke that his "tired tropes succumbed to repetitive strain injuries through over-exercised metaphors," though his metaphors do get a vigorous workout.
Clarke does not press the point, but his story resonates powerfully with current events. In the end, though, his message is not entirely clear. His strictures against those who, like Ghandi, were willing to indulge romantic notions if it cost a million lives, are strangely suspended whenever Churchill comes into view. Can myth-making be excused when things happen to turn out well?
Find other books like this one:
