Day of Empire - How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall

Informationen zum Autor Amy Chua is the John M. Duff Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is a noted expert in the fields of international business, ethnic conflict, and globalization. Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability , a New York Times bestseller, was selected by both The Economist and the U.K.'s Guardian as one of the Best Books of the Year. Her second book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance-and Why They Fall , was a critically acclaimed Foreign Affairs bestseller. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and two daughters.   Klappentext In this sweeping history! bestselling author Amy Chua explains how globally dominant empires-or hyperpowers-rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliant chapter-length studies! she examines the most powerful cultures in history-from the ancient empires of Persia and China to the recent global empires of England and the United States-and reveals the reasons behind their success! as well as the roots of their ultimate demise. Chua's analysis uncovers a fascinating historical pattern: while policies of tolerance and assimilation toward conquered peoples are essential for an empire to succeed! the multicultural society that results introduces new tensions and instabilities! threatening to pull the empire apart from within. What this means for the United States' uncertain future is the subject of Chua's provocative and surprising conclusion. Leseprobe ONE THE FIRST HEGEMON The Great Persian Empire from Cyrus to Alexander When Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C., the world was old. More significant, the world knew its antiquity. Its scholars had compiled long dynastic lists, and simple addition appeared to prove that kings whose monuments were still visible had ruled more than four millenniums before. —A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire , 1948 I should be glad, Onesicritus, to come back to life for a little while after my death to discover how men read these present events then. —Alexander the Great, quoted by Lucien in “ How to Write History ,” circa AD 40 The word paradise is Persian in origin. Old Persian had a term pairidaeza , which the Greeks rendered as paradeisos , referring to the fabulous royal parks and pleasure gardens of the Achaemenids—the kings of the mighty Persian Empire who ruled from roughly 559 to 330 BC. Indeed, the earliest Greek translators of the Old Testament used this term for the Garden of Eden and the afterlife, as if to suggest that the Achaemenid paradises were as close as man had come to replicating heaven on earth. (1) The Achaemenid paradises were famous throughout the ancient world. Their riches, it was said, included every tree bearing every fruit known to man, the most fragrant and dazzling flowers that grew anywhere from Libya to India, and exotic animals from the farthest reaches of an empire covering more than two million square miles. There were Parthian camels, Assyrian rams, Armenian horses, Cappadocian mules, Nubian giraffes, Indian elephants, Lydian ibex, Babylonian buffalo, and the most ferocious lions, bulls, and wild beasts from throughout the kingdom. Not just formal gardens, the paradises were also centers for horticultural experimentation, zoological parks, and hunting reserves. A royal hunt in a single paradise could yield four thousand head. (2) In this respect, the Achaemenid paradises were a living metaphor for the Achaemenid Empire as a whole. Founded around 559 BC by Cyrus the Great and spanning more than two centuries, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was, even by today's standards, one of the most culturally diverse and religiously open empires in history. The Achaemenid kings actively recru...

Product details

• Authors: Amy Chua
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 06.01.2009
• EAN: 9781400077410
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7741-0
• No. of pages: 432
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 200 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Anchor Paperbacks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book; Weltgeschichte, Weltmacht