The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Why great powers rise and then decline is what Paul Kennedy asks across roughly five centuries. He argues that a nation's strength can only be measured against its rivals, and that over the long run it follows economic resources and productive capacity. When ambitions and security needs outgrow that base, military overstretch brings relative decline. First published in 1987, the study moves from the Ming and Muslim worlds of 1500 through the Habsburg bid for mastery and an era, from 1660 to 1815, when financing wars set Britain and France apart from Prussia, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Kennedy also forecasts where the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, China and the European Economic Community would stand by the century's end.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, called it a great book and made the remark while discussing historians who distilled long stretches of history down to their themes.