Governing the World: The History of an Idea - Hardcover

Mazower, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713996838 ISBN 13: 9780713996838

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2012

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the RUSI 2013 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military Literature

From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Dark Continent and Hitler's Empire, comes a visionary, far-reaching history of two centuries of international government that also goes to the heart of current world crises.

In 1815 the shocked and exhausted victors of the decades of fighting that had engulfed Europe for a generation agreed to a new system for keeping the peace. Instead of independent states changing sides, doing deals and betraying one another, a new, collegial 'Concert of Europe' would ensure that the brutal chaos of the Napoleonic Wars never happened again.

Mark Mazower's remarkable new book recreates two centuries of international government - the struggle to spread values and build institutions to bring order to an anarchic and dangerous state system. It shows how what started as a European story became the framework for today's world, as free traders, communists and nationalists all put forward their own radical visions of international harmony.

Reviews:

'A significant contribution to historical scholarship ... Simply for giving us this lucid account, Mazower deserves our gratitude. But Governing the World is also an intriguing read because of the strong argument he places within it ... This new work certainly gave this reviewer an awful lot to think about - to an author, there may be no greater praise than that' Paul Kennedy, Financial Times

'This is a book that needed to be written ... [Governing the World] is truly illuminating ... The story is a fascinating one, and Mazower tells it with authority and verve' Adam Zamoyski, Literary Review

'Mazower has strengthened his claim to be the preeminent historian of a generation. Combining breathtaking originality with meticulous and gloriously eclectic research, he offers the most convincing explanation yet articulated ... On rare occasions, a work of history emerges that not only fundamentally refashions our understanding of the past, it enables us to reassess the present and, with luck, influence our future. I advise everyone who is concerned about our precarious situation to learn from and absorb Mazower's remarkable achievement' Misha Glenny

'Bursting with ideas about present and future as well as past' Stephen Howe, Independent BOOKS OF THE YEAR

'A prodigious work: a master historian's reconstruction of how individuals and nations since 1815 have sought to promote national interests in ever more complicated international settings. A dramatic, novel account of ideas and institutions in collision with hard realities. Indispensable also for its full and subtle account of American policies since 1917, always with a fine touch for the hitherto neglected person or little noticed moment that illuminates historic processes. Profound, relevant, and morally instructive - and a pleasure to read' Fritz Stern

About the author:

Mark Mazower is Ira D.Wallach Professor of World Order Studies and Professor of History Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, The Balkans: A Short History (which won the Wolfson Prize for History), Salonica: City of Ghosts (which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Runciman Award) and Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. He has also taught at Birkbeck College, University of London, Sussex University and Princeton. He lives in New York.

About this title

Review:

A significant contribution to historical scholarship, with the chapters on the 19th century's remarkable swirl of politics, ideas and organisations being particularly original and valuable ... Simply for giving us this lucid account, Mazower deserves our gratitude. But Governing the World is also an intriguing read because of the strong argument he places within it ... This new work certainly gave this reviewer an awful lot to think about - to an author, there may be no greater praise than that (Paul Kennedy Financial Times)

Mazower has strengthened his claim to be the preeminent historian of a generation. Combining breathtaking originality with meticulous and gloriously eclectic research, he offers the most convincing explanation yet articulated for the exaggerated, even hysterical, expectations of the 1990s and the subsequent collapse of optimism after the Millennium now translated into a fear that grips large parts of the Western world. On rare occasions, a work of history emerges that not only fundamentally refashions our understanding of the past, it enables us to reassess the present and, with luck, influence our future. I advise everyone who is concerned about our precarious situation to learn from and absorb Mazower's remarkable achievement (Misha Glenny)

Governing Europe, and then the whole world ... this idea has found its perfect chronicler in Mark Mazower, whose perceptions are cosmopolitan, humane, learned, and properly skeptical. What is more, his history is written in clear, elegant prose. Essential reading not just for historians, but anyone interested in the troubled world we live in (Ian Buruma)

Bursting with ideas about present and future as well as past (Stephen Howe Independent BOOKS OF THE YEAR)

This is a book that needed to be written ... [Governing the World] is truly illuminating ... The story is a fascinating one, and Mazower tells it with authority and verve (Adam Zamoyski Literary Review)

A prodigious work: a master historian's reconstruction of how individuals and nations since 1815 have sought to promote national interests in ever more complicated international settings. A dramatic, novel account of ideas and institutions in collision with hard realities. Indispensable also for its full and subtle account of American policies since 1917, always with a fine touch for the hitherto neglected person or little noticed moment that illuminates historic processes. Profound, relevant, and morally instructive - and a pleasure to read (Fritz Stern)

Mazower is a man of immense erudition, a real scholar ... [A] remarkable book ... Reading him is like being lectured by the best left-wing professor you'll ever have. Or like reading the best foreign affairs writer the Guardian or the Nation has to offer ... You can learn a lot from him (Standpoint)

The idea of global government has entranced the world for centuries. Mark Mazower's brilliant book shows how much effort has gone into this idea - and how futile it has mostly been in an era of individualism and growing divisiveness (Alan Brinkley)

About the Author:

Mark Mazower is the author of Inside Hitler's Greece, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, The Balkans, which won the Wolfson Prize for History, and Salonika: City of Ghosts, which won both the Runciman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He has taught at the University of Sussex, Princeton University and Birkbeck College, University of London. He is now Professor of History at Columbia University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0713996838
• ISBN 13: 9780713996838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 496