A high-level overview of the development and dissolution of the British Empire. As you might expect for a globe-spanning empire* the book had a broad sweep and didn't delve deeply into many areas, spending the most time on India and Africa. Ferguson is pro-Imperial, claiming that the empire brought law and prosperity to the colonies, and he mainly glosses over the negative impacts of colonialism. He finishes by making the case that the US would be a natural successor to the UK, but our distaste for empire makes it unlikely ("...the American approach has too often been to fire some shells, march in, hold elections, and then get the hell out"). Read with a grain of salt, but enjoy the overview of how a world empire came to be.

* apparently at it's peak one quarter of the world's landmass and a fifth of its people were under British rule