Introduction

The fate of empires is an obscure work by an obscure man. It apparently still has a following to day, because quite frequently i am asked to read and discuss it. Glubb himself did not go fully native, as by taking an arab wife or converting to islam. He was an englishman to the core,. something that comes through clearly in good and bad ways in this book. As america flails impotently in a doomed effort to maintain global pre eminence, a discussion of how empires end seems particularly timely.