"The Rise and Fall of the British Empire"

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (Lawrence James)

I'm not sure what to make of this book; On the one hand I was never bored reading it, but on the other it's tough to recommend. I think the problem really just boils down to scope. The author has set himself quite an audacious task here, and I'm sad to report that it falls a bit short, on length if nothing else - chronicling the rise and fall of the worldwide British empire is a massive undertaking, and even coming in at over 600 big pages, what you have here is mostly a very high-level overview. Subjects like the Raj that could take up entire volumes themselves are distilled down to under 200 pages. The result is a good, but unfortunately shallow; I would recommend this as a first read before seeing which parts of the history described whet your appetite, then looking for books that cover those areas in more detail.
Now, to be fair, aside from not getting enough of it, what you do get is pretty good; its brevity (well, relative brevity; it's still massive) keeps the book moving very quickly. The only other complaint I can muster is that there are a few bizarre errors in the text - numerous typos, words left out, and my personal bane, quotation marks that begin and don't end, as well as one case where there's a set of ending quotation marks without a beginning. Add this all up and you've got an interesting but not essential book. (Also works well for flatting out curved Magic cards)

Grade: B-