Old World, New World: The Story of Britain and America

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Kathleen Burk

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Pages: 832 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 0316861669

Pub: Little, Brown & Company

Pub date: 2007-10-23

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 100867

Reader Reviews:

An outstanding achievement (2/2 people found this helpful)

This is one of my top reads this year - a tour de force of Anglo-American relations from the very beginnings of Jamestown Settlement and Plymouth Rock to the tense days of the Iraqi invasion in 2003 and after.

Although I give this book 5 stars - I do feel that more should have been written about the links between American and British business after World War II - Burk's focus is almost entirely on inter-governmental relationships. She also doesn't cover the growth of anti-Americanism in Britain.

Still - highly recommended!

An historical 'tour de force' - buy this work of genius! (10/12 people found this helpful)

This book is an historical 'tour de force' and Kathleen Burk has produced a work of genius. Here we have some 830 pages (including extensive notes and the index) devoted to a better understanding of the sometimes fraught relations between 'The Mother Country' (Great Britain) and her often naughty 'child' (the Colonies collectively and then the United States), seen from both points of view and spanning some 400 years. Ms. Burk does both mother and child proud and will do her readers a power of good. The 'special relationship' is examined with scholarly rigour and thoroughness and the whole work is well-written. Having taken many evenings to read the book, I came to two conclusions: first, that the influence and power for good or ill that flowed over the centuries from Great Britain to the United States largely followed the movement of physical gold. It is a conclusion that bodes difficulties to come for the U.S., and I write this with no pleasure. Secondly, I concluded that if only the American part of the old British Empire had stayed 'loyal' and had continued to be guided by British experience and wisdom, many of yesterday's and today's problems would not have emerged or would have been dealt with differently. On balance, Great Britain's governments and statesmen mostly seem to have had so much more common sense and nous than those of the United States - discuss!

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