David Edgerton

From the acclaimed author of Britain's War Machine and The Shock of the Old, a bold reassessment of Britain's twentieth century. It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, from building a welfare state to coping with decline. Nobody would dream of writing the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union in this way. David Edgerton's major new history breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to redefine what it was to British, and to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to huge disruptions. This was not simply because of the world wars and global economic transformations, but in its very nature. Until the 1940s the United Kingdom was, Edgerton argues, an exceptional place: liberal, capitalist and anti-nationalist, at the heart of a European and global web of trade and influence. Then, as its global position collapsed, it became, for the first time and only briefly, a real, successful nation, with shared goals, horizons and industry, before reinventing itself again in the 1970s as part of the European Union and as the host for international capital, no longer capable of being a nation. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history which takes business and warfare seriously, and which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.

Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This nation was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways.David Edgertons fascinating perspective produces refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.

Innovación y tradición Historia de la tecnología moderna David Edgerton En esta primera interpretación global de la historia de la tecnología, David Edgerton, catedrático del Imperial College de Londres, cuestiona la idea comunmente asumida de que vivimos en una epoca de superacion tecnologica constante y nos advierte que con frecuencia pasamos por alto las tecnologias que seran utiles para la sociedad del siglo XXI, algunas sorprendentemente antiguas como los preservativos, la maquina de coser, el cemento, la sierra mecanica o el frigorifico, y otras practicamente olvidadas, desde el petroleo sintetico español a loa cazas de combate egipcios, o de las camaras de gas americanas a las factorias carnicas del Rio de la Plata. A partir de una rigurosa investigacion que entrelaza historia politica, economica y cultural, el profesor Edgerton denunci ael ilusorio futurismo de la llamada “era de la informacion”, nos brinda una perspectiva distinta de nuestra relacion con la tecnica y en palabras del profesor Fernandez Armesto, “nos obliga a repensar la historia entera de la tecnologia moderna”. Texto solapa: David Edgerton, uno de los historiadores de la ciencia y la tecnologia mas destacados del Reino Unido, nacio en Montevideo. En la actualidad es Ha