• Seapower States

  • Maritime Culture, Continental Empires, and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
  • By: Andrew Lambert
  • Narrated by: Julian Elfer
  • Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (43 ratings)

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Seapower States

By: Andrew Lambert
Narrated by: Julian Elfer
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Publisher's summary

Andrew Lambert, author of The Challenge - winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal - turns his attention to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, examining how their identities as "seapowers" informed their actions and enabled them to achieve success disproportionate to their size.

Lambert demonstrates how creating maritime identities made these states more dynamic, open, and inclusive than their lumbering continental rivals. Only when they forgot this aspect of their identity did these nations begin to decline. Recognizing that the United States and China are modern naval powers - rather than seapowers - is essential to understanding current affairs, as well as the long-term trends in world history. This volume is a highly original "big think" analysis of five states whose success - and eventual failure - is a subject of enduring interest, by a scholar at the top of his game.

©2018 Andrew Lambert (P)2018 Tantor
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about Seapower States

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Great history and analysis, but...

Thoroughly enjoyed listening. Great history book and the author draws a lot of his own conclusions from comparison of other great powers in a historically different context. Excellent. However, the only criticism is he spends a lot of time trying to justify his definition of sea state, which is ambiguous and controversial. However, in the end, he defines a sea state by what it doesn't have rather than intrinsic characteristics.

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Quite Amazing Read

Wow. The most reflective historical essay I have yet to encounter. Dr Lambert revises our perspective of our historical landscape by focusing on those States that have shaped our current understanding of what is best and the brightest in ourselves. My greatest wish would be that the leadership of the Western democracies took its teachings to heart. With thoughtful leadership as shown by the author we have the tools necessary to contain the autocratic monocultures that would do us harm today. By his choice of the play of history Dr Lambert allows us to see how we are both inheritors of value and are now actors that have choice in developing our future State and States. Remarkable.

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A world on water

love this book and have listened to it twice. the reader, Julian elfer the best!

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not awful

It's a cool premise, but he never really delivered on it. I'm convinced by the basics of the premise, but only because of what I already knew about Venice and Great Britain.

Good basic history, but he never actually digs into his own argument. The premise is that the identity is based on culture and "constant renewal" but we never actually went into what that means and how these cultures executed on either.

Not a compelling read.

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only got 1 hour or so through

Intro and part of Ch. 1 i listened to were horribly repetitive....went around in circles a bit--these are not such difficult cocnepts that they require this. the editor failed in his job.
gave up
maybe back end is better

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5 people found this helpful