America is in trouble at home and abroad. Difficulties abound: unemployment and poverty for many, financial pressure for most, opulence for just a privileged few. Yet America is also active abroad, in a role that is equally troubling and difficult. This book explores the relationship between problems at home and challenges abroad, to see if by reducing the latter we can improve the former. It does so by examining the fate of economies and societies that have also briefly enjoyed global dominance. By looking back at what went wrong for them, we might go forward avoiding similar mistakes. The empires that preceded us - and left the greatest imprint upon us - are the ones chosen for particular attention here: the empires of Rome, Spain, Britain and Russia (both Tsarist and Soviet). They ultimately fell.

Must America follow suit, or can we learn from their mistakes how best to avoid our own?.