The Political and Strategic History of the World, Vol II By Lord Conrad Black

 

The Political and Strategic History of the World, Vol II:

From the Caesars to the Peace of Westphalia and Louis XIV, A.D. 14-1661

By Lord Conrad Black

In this sweeping second volume of the series, The Political and Strategic History of the World, Volume II: From the Caesars to the Peace of Westphalia and Louis XIV, A.D. 14-1661, Lord Conrad Black covers the height and long decline of the Roman Empire, the barbaric invasions, the rise of Christianity, the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium, the Mongol and Islamic invasions, the slow rise of the nation states of Europe and the history of the early Church through the Reformation to the end of the Thirty Years' War and the accession of Louis XIV.

Contrary to the modern proclivity to view history as a coalition of forces working upon passive human society, viewing individual human beings as helpless cogs in the machine, Lord Black insists that history is shaped by very human ambitions and motivations – Churchill's "fine agate points" on which history turns – individual human decisions made in specific times and places. These are especially illuminated by Black's learned assessments of the accomplishments of the many and varied emperors, kings, and queens appearing throughout this volume and in which Lord Black often differs markedly with other historians, most notably Edward Gibbon on the role of Christianity in the late Roman Empire.

In The Political and Strategic History of the World, Vol. II, you'll learn about:

• The role of Christianity in the fall of the Western Roman Empire - I disagree with Gibbon;
• The extent to which Islam is an imitation of Christianity;
• The extent to which Christian influence was a moderating or civilizing one in the early and later Middle Ages;
• The reasons why France and England were the leading early countries;
• The reasons for the comparative vulnerability of Spain and the late unification of Germany and Italy;
• The different ways the Reformation was handled in the main European countries; and
• The reasons why Elizabeth I was instrumental in developing the British state and Richelieu in developing the modern state for all countries.

A delight to read, 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.

Lord Black's ambitious work is presented with elegance and erudition.

--Dr. Henry Kissinger

Our modern Gibbon, Conrad Black takes the reader from the height of the Roman Empire to the end of the Medieval period 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 

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 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 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.