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The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History
David Edgerton
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Description for The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History
Paperback. BIC Classification: HB. Dimension: 198 x 129. .
'Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain ... You will not find a better informed history' David Goodhart, Evening Standard
'A striking new perspective on our past' Piers Brendon, Literary Review
From the acclaimed author of Britain's War Machine and The Shock of the Old, a bold reassessment of Britain's twentieth century.
It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, from building a welfare state to coping with decline. Nobody ... Read morewould dream of writing the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union in this way.
David Edgerton's major new history breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to redefine what it was to British, and to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to huge disruptions. This was not simply because of the world wars and global economic transformations, but in its very nature. Until the 1940s the United Kingdom was, Edgerton argues, an exceptional place: liberal, capitalist and anti-nationalist, at the heart of a European and global web of trade and influence. Then, as its global position collapsed, it became, for the first time and only briefly, a real, successful nation, with shared goals, horizons and industry, before reinventing itself again in the 1970s as part of the European Union and as the host for international capital, no longer capable of being a nation.
Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history which takes business and warfare seriously, and which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.
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Product Details
Publisher
Penguin Books Ltd
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About David Edgerton
David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books in 20th century British history: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; as well as Britain's War Machine, and England and the ... Read moreAeroplane, both published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Show Less
Reviews for The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History
Every so often a book comes out that the entire political class needs to read ... Edgerton is Britain's most exciting and arresting late-modern historian ... Thanks to this rich and compelling book, we now have a proper map and compass.
Colin Kidd
New Statesman
A fierce and dazzling account of 20th-century Britain
Christopher de Bellaigue ... Read more
Guardian
An extraordinary revisionist study of modern Britain ... Edgerton's aim here is nothing short of a radical repositioning of our sense of ourselves as a nation. It's a startling book, and an unexpected thesis ... I'll be reading [it] over and over, and for years to come.'
Brian Morton
The Herald
Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain in the 20th century ... You will not find a better informed history of this country in the last century.
David Goodhart
Evening Standard
Stimulating and bracing ... He demonstrates that the story the British tell about themselves - and how it is taught in schools and discussed in the public sphere - is bogus.
Iain Martin
The Times
Unsentimental and rigorous rewriting of British history. ... It looks beyond the froth of political debate, takes business seriously and analyses government as much from Whitehall and administration as Westminster and politics.
A. W. Purdue
Times Higher Education
Beautifully written and can be read with pleasure by the general reader as well as the trained historian
Vernon Bogdanor
Daily Telegraph
Original, opinionated, scholarly, complex and immensely stimulating ... this ambitious and provocative book achieves something remarkable. It provides a striking new perspective on our past, one that future historians may not accept but will be unable to ignore.
Piers Brendon
Literary Review
A sweepingly, and ambitiously, revisionist account of 20th century British history ... full of striking lines ... and a very important challenge to much of the existing historiography.
Duncan Weldon
Progressive Review
Timely jolt to a deluded 'Bullshit Britain'. David Edgerton fillets national delusion and historical amnesia ... of a country that knows so little of its own history.
Chris Kissane
Irish Times
Edgerton is an extraordinary historian ... Written with bracing élan, Rise and Fall generates insights at every turn. Edgerton set out to rattle "the cage of clichés which imprison our historical and political imaginations", and succeeds magnificently.
Nick Pearce
OpenDemocracy
... refreshing and immensely stimulating, and should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to understand the reality of twentieth-century Britain. Lewis Namier, another historian known for his combative brand of scholarship, viewed iconoclasm as the judge of a great historian, that having produced an account of a period 'others should not be able to practise within its sphere in the terms of the preceding era'. Edgerton has certainly achieved this.
Oliver Hadingham
History
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