“History on an epic scale—sweeping, provocative, and unsparing in its judgment." —Andrew Bacevich, author of After the Apocalypse: America's Role in a World Transformed narrates the rising empires and fading world orders of the last seven centuries, from the Iberian Age to the British Empire to the post-World War II American era. As historian Alfred McCoy explains, each world order has been defined by shifting principles of sovereignty, debates over human rights, and the quest for profitable forms of energy. Today as the US world order, with its voracious consumption of fossil fuels, faces mounting crises, McCoy shows how past patterns of energy use will trouble the planet for the rest of this century and beyond. This paperback edition has a new preface by the author.