Decline-and-Fall History

The Collapse of British Power By Correlli Barnett

Morrow, 643 pp., $15 Among professional historians there is an age-old magnetic pull toward the study of the demise of great nations and great institutions and toward the sermonizing that goes along with it. Despite the obvious hazards that scare the more fastidious scholars away from big works of synthesis, there will always be at least some reputable authors and readers in the field of “decline and fall” history. Ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Catholicism, Renaissance Italy, post-Napoleonic France are among the recurrent themes (perhaps post-Kennedy U.S.A. will be added).

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Brenton H. Smith

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The Collapse of British Power By Correlli Barnett

Morrow, 643 pp., $15 Among professional historians there is an age-old magnetic pull toward the study of the demise of great nations and great institutions and toward the sermonizing that goes along with it. Despite the obvious hazards that scare the more fastidious scholars away from big works of synthesis, there will always be at least some reputable authors and readers in the field of “decline and fall” history. Ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Catholicism, Renaissance Italy, post-Napoleonic France are among the recurrent themes (perhaps post-Kennedy U.S.A. will be added).