Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Before Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee and other historians of cultural rise and fall, there was Brooks Adams. And while today there are ever more historians adding their theories as to why civilizations collapse through such factors as military invasion, over-taxation, or ecological shifts, most of these theories do not get to the cause of how civilizations, if not stunted and killed in youth or middle age, die of old age.

Our Western Civilization has an optimism that we have a culture of eternal life because of our science and industry, but it is precisely in this cycle of so-called 'progress' that a civilization falls. While Spengler described this process of the birth, life and death of cultures, several decades previously Brooks Adams, contemplating his observations of societies, concluded that the way a society considers its money as a culture-symbol tells the character of the society. Spengler also dealt with the money question as a symbol of cultural rise and fall, and would surely have applauded Brooks Adams' work, although he did not seem to have been aware of the American's study.

In the Law of Civilisation and Decay, Adams considers various societies and civilisations by the symbolism, manner and influence of their coinage, and concludes that a society or civilisation becomes sapped of its culture-vigour, its creative genius, when entering a cycle where money becomes the dominant factor rather than merely serving as a mechanism. The energy of a society, or what we might regard as its collective libido, is diverted fully into commerce and trade and what remains of cultural creativity becomes an economic activity for the market: a commodity. This is precisely where our Western Civilisation stands today. For those 'with eyes to see' the value of Brooks Adams' work should strike an immediate chord.

From The Romans Through The Victorian Era, A View Of History And How Cultures Decline.

An attempt to deal, by inductive methods, with the consolidation and dissolution of those administrative masses which we call empires. Includes bibliographical references and index. In 1866, being asked by his publisher to write a short history of Massachusetts, Brooks Adams (1848-1927) broke upon the literary world with The Emancipation of Massachusetts in which he demolished and rewrote the history of the colony and province of Massachusetts Bay, originally chronicled by the priestly oligarchy against which the book was launched, and in later times principally by eminent members of the Congregational clergy. It made a great stir, especially in religious circles, and brought severe criticism and even denunciation upon the author, but he lived to see it pass to a second edition as accepted history. He then turned to a study of trade-routes and their influence upon the history of peoples and nations and in 1896 published The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History, a work of a high order as history which laid down the principle that human societies differed among themselves in proportion as they were endowed by nature with energy, a principle later developed by Henry Adams. He regarded this as his most significant work. Beginning in 1907 he successfully filled the chair of constitutional law in Boston University. "Pursuing a line of argument already worked out in his Law of Civilization and Decay, Mr. Adams offers an explanation, a theory it may be called, of the rise and decline of successive "empires" from the dawn of history to the present. The objective point of the argument is to account for the present, or imminent, supremacy of America as an imperial power." -Thorstein Veblen

The TSR2 is one of the greatest 'what-if' aircraft of the Cold War, whose cancellation still generates anger and controversy among aviation fans. It was a magnificent, cutting-edge aircraft, one of the most striking of the Cold War, but fell victim to cost overruns, overambitious requirements, and politics. Its scrapping marked the point when Britain's aerospace industry could no longer build world-class aircraft independently. After the demise of TSR2 the RAF's future jets would be modified US aircraft like the Phantom and pan-European collaborations like Tornado and Typhoon. In this book the eminent air power analyst and ex-Vulcan bomber pilot Andrew Brookes takes a fresh, hard-headed look at the TSR2 project, telling the story of its development, short career and cancellation, and evaluating how it would have performed in Cold War strike roles as well as in the recent wars in the Middle East.