Unfinished Empire

John Darwin''s After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain''s imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation.

Darwin...