A History of Britain, Vol. 2: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776
The beginning of the 17th century promised that England's golden age  would long outlast its Elizabethan namesake. Within a few years, that promise  would end in civil war, political unrest, and international conflict, a period  of strife that would last for two centuries, but produce the modern British  nation. In this swiftly moving narrative, the second installment in a three- volume companion to the BBC/History Channel television series, Simon Schama  examines key events that would utterly change British life: the collapse of  monarchy and republic, the establishment of the beginnings of empire, and the  ever-wider division between court and country. The wars that accompanied these  turns of fortune were, Schama writes, "eminently unpredictable, improbable, and  avoidable." With them came the Glorious Revolution, the bloody suppression of  religious dissent, the conquest of neighboring kingdoms, and the wide-scale  movement of large populations from one place to another--including the  deliberate introduction of nearly 100,000 Scots, Welsh, and English settlers in  Ireland, which, Schama writes, "utterly dwarfed the related 'planting' on the  Atlantic seaboard of North America." Along the way, Schama considers actors  major and minor in this tumultuous play, from the unlucky king Charles I to  Oliver Cromwell (who "lacked the one essential characteristic for true  dictatorship: a hunger to accumulate power purely for its own sake"), from the  writer Daniel Defoe to the pragmatic politician Sir Robert Walpole, from William  Pitt to the African slaves who peopled Britain's American colonies.Though understandably rushed and sometimes unfocused, Schama's narrative ably  captures Britain's transformation from island outpost to global power.-- Gregory McNamee