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Ferguson's book, though by no means blithely optimistic about the US empire in general or Iraq in particular, does hold out a prospect of success there. He indicates that the vast costs of security and reconstruction will be covered by oil sales. This begs the obvious question: will a supposedly sovereign Iraqi government, after 1 July, really use its huge oil revenues to thank the Americans for their kind help?
This brings us to the final criticism of this book. While not neglecting the subject entirely, it has something of a blind spot about international law. In particular, it fails to note the insidious effects on international opinion of simultaneously having a capacity to wage war from the air with few casualties, failing to prepare for occupation, and mistreating prisoners in con- travention of the most basic norms. There is no mention of the long-running sore of Guantanamo. The book's UK sub-title, with its reference to the "rise and fall" of the US empire, may contain an uncomfortable truth.

"Niall Ferguson is a prolific writer and a talented controversialist. He brings a wealth of historical knowledge to bear on big questions, and does not shrink from definite conclusions. In this age of a single military superpower, no question is bigger than the nature and future direction of the United States' role in the world. Colossus is a wide-ranging, but deeply flawed, exploration of what US dominance means.
There is a central muddle in the book's message, reflected in its subtitle. In the UK edition it is ""The Rise and Fall of the American Empire"". In the original US edition, it is ""The Price of America's Empire"". The change to ""rise and fall"" no doubt reflects a healthy recognition of profound scepticism in the UK about the American imperium, especially in the dreadful psycho-drama being acted out in Iraq. So what is Ferguson arguing: that there is a US empire that requires an honest recognition of the price to be paid for it, or that it is already falling?
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Niall Ferguson

Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson (born April 18, 1964, in Glasgow) is a British historian who specialises in financial and economic history as well as the history of colonialism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University as well as William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and also currently the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. He was educated at the private Glasgow Academy in Scotland, and at Magdalen College, Oxford.

The Times Higher Education noted his "pugnacious undergraduate life and debating style". In 2008, Ferguson published The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World  which he also presented as a Channel 4 television series. Both at Harvard College and at LSE, Ferguson teaches an undergraduate class entitled "Western Ascendancy: The Mainsprings of Global Power from 1600 to the Present."

Ferguson is a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and an advisory fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of North Texas.

In May 2010 he announced that the Education Secretary in the U.K's newly elected Conservative/Lib Dem government had invited him to write a new history syllabus—"history as a connected narrative"— for schools in England and Wales.

In October 2007, Niall Ferguson left The Sunday Telegraph to join the Financial Times, where he is now a contributing editor.

Личен сайт: http://www.niallferguson.com/