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Title: An Empire on the Edge
Subtitle: How Britain Came to Fight America
Author: Nick Bunker
Narrator: Robert Ian Mackenzie
Format: Unabridged
Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins
Language: English
Release date: 09-23-14
Publisher: Recorded Books
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 85 votes
Genres: History, American
Publisher's Summary:
The story of the American Revolution told from the unique perspective of British Parliament and the streets of London, rather than that of the Colonies. Here, Nick Bunker explores and illuminates the dramatic chain of events that led to the outbreak of the war-revealing a tale of muddle, mistakes, and misunderstandings by men in London that led to the Boston tea party and then to the decision to send redcoats into action against the minutemen. Charting the three years prior to the war during which the British regime in America was already collapsing, Bunker shows how a lethal combination of politics and personalities led to a war that should never have been fought. Revisiting the tea party from the point of view of British economics and drawing upon new and unpublished sources from Britain and the U.S., he argues that thanks to the colonialists' misunderstandings about the strength of British power, and London's inability to take American cries for freedom seriously, both were pushed beyond the point of compromise. The outcome? A war that few welcomed but all were powerless to stop.
Members Reviews:
What does the Price of Tea in China or ...
... the fall of the Berlin Wall have to do with the American Revolution? Read and learn.
Maybe its a left brain/right brain thing, a touch of ADHD, or simply a liking for puzzles, but this is the kind of history I enjoy. I have enormous respect for historical biographers who fasten on their subject and track down all the small details of their lives, and have worked my way through a lot of their books (with Audible making it a bit easier than reading), but neither enjoy them or retain much afterwards.
On the other hand, I couldn't wait to get back to "Empire" as it skipped around throwing in everything from a nobleman who "looked like a lamb chop in parsley," the Gaspe Incident (giving Rhode Island more credit for the Revolution than we ever hear about in Boston), to the 1792 financial crisis, and much more. Even though I know how it all turned out, its a lot of fun seeing it put together, as the author says in one part, "like a jigsaw." And, by the way, I hardly ever comment on the readers, but this one is perfect for the subject.
If you try this book and like it, you might like Citizens of London, A World on Fire, and Conspiracy of Fools - different subjects, same style.
Hard to put down
Occasionally I come across a book that is so interesting that I am torn between not wanting to stop listening and not wanting to finish and, in spite of the lackluster narration, this is such a book.
Mr Bunker has given us a book that, for the first time in my reading experience, describes how the American Revolution got started, but from the British perspective. Here we are told what motivated the British to take the stands that they did, the effect of speculation on both the East India Company and the price of tea, the rampant smuggling of tea in both the UK and the colonies, why the Tea Party was such an important event to the British, the internal divisions within all of the factions on the British side, the effect, or lack thereof, of such prominent people as William Pitt The Elder, Lord North, Edmund Burke, King George III and others and much else.
