He writes military, political and economic history as well as biography he is an innovative methodologist he has starred in his own six-part television documentary (on the British Empire) and he is a prolific commentator on current affairs. Unlike most of his academic colleagues, he defies categorization. Trained at Oxford, Ferguson taught there for a decade before moving to New York University, where he has briefly been professor of financial history - he joins the Harvard history department later this year. If the United States is pre-eminent in the world these days, then surely Ferguson is so within his profession. No contemporary historian rivals him in the range, productivity and visibility of his scholarship. Despite having just turned 40, he has four other major books to his credit, one of them - a history of the Rothschilds - in two volumes. Within the world of historians, however, it has a parallel.įerguson himself, during the past four years, has published three big books: on the relationship between money and the power of states since 1700 on the history of the British Empire and now on the achievements and prospects of the only empire left, that of the United States.
''Toppling three tyrannies within four years,'' he notes, ''is no mean achievement by the standards of any past global empire.'' It is an impressive record, even for a country whose military strength, since the cold war ended, has been unchallenged. NIALL FERGUSON points out, toward the end of this book, that between 19 the United States played the decisive role in removing Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power.
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