Kennedy's far-ranging survey explores the relationship between economics, strategy, technology, and military power. He argues for the primacy of economic factors to explain why some states achieved great power status. By the same token, nations stumbled and declined when their financial resources could no longer support their military ambitions and commitments. The book?s thesis and its discussion of the dangers of ?imperial overstretch? remain as relevant today as when it was first published in 1987.

U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional reading list, 2017. The U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List 2017 Includes maps of: World Power Centers in the Sixteenth Century; Political Divisions of Europe in the Sixteenth Century; Charles V's Inheritance; Collapse of Spanish Power in Europe; Europe in 1721; European Colonial Empires, c. 1750; Europe at the Height of Napoleon's Power, 1810; Chief Possessions, Naval Bases, and Submarine Cables of the British Empire, c. 1900; European Powers and Their War Plans in 1914; Europe after the First World War; Europe at the Height of Hitler's Power, 1942; Worldwide U.S. Force Deployments, 1987. Includes index.

Strategy and economics in the preindustrial world. The rise of the Western world ; The Habsburg bid for mastery, 1519-1659 ; Finance, geography, and the winning of wars, 1660-1815 -- Strategy and economics in the industrial era. Industrialization and the shifting global balances, 1815-1885 ; The coming of a bipolar world and the crisis of the "middle powers" : part one, 1885-1918 ; The coming of a bipolar world and the crisis of the "middle powers" : part 2, 1919-1942 -- Strategy and economics today and tomorrow. Stability and change in a bipolar world, 1943-1980 ; To the twenty-first century.