The Return of the Great Powers

Name: The Return of the Great Powers
Price: 34.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9781399816953

Brendan Simms, Mike Cooper

$34.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Basic Books
02 June 2026

History; General & world history; Political science & theory; Geopolitics

From an acclaimed historian, a sweeping study of the past, present, and future of the Great Powers, revealing the new rules of global leadership.

From the dawn of the modern era to the end of the Cold War, global history was defined by rivalries between great powers. In the West, this meant the struggle for supremacy in Europe and the Americas, while in the East, it encompassed those vying for control over the successor states to Genghis Khan's empire. Between 1989 and the year 2000, great power rivalry temporarily gave way to globalization, with liberal democracy on the march and national chauvinism seemingly in retreat. But events of the past decade have made one thing abundantly clear: the great powers are back.

In The Return of the Great Powers, renowned historian Brendan Simms offers a new history of the rise, fall, and return of the Great Powers in our time. He shows that over the past ten years or so, the major global actors have already resumed making decisions based on geopolitical rather than global economic considerations. Delivering a clear-eyed reckoning with today's most pressing geopolitical issues, from the Ukraine war to the future of American dominance, The Return of the Great Powers insists that we can only understand the future of the great powers by looking to the history that forged them.

By: Brendan Simms
Read by: Mike Cooper
Imprint: Basic Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 232mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 40mm
Weight: 580g
ISBN: 9781399816953
ISBN 10: 1399816950
Pages: 462
Publication Date: 02 June 2026
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Brendan Simms is a professor in the history of international relations and fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He is the author of eight previous books, including Hitler's American Gamble and Europe. He lives in Cambridge, UK.