Top Three Books of 2016

Top three Books of 2016 1. Liberty and Empire Duncan Bell (At a moment when the world seems to be falling apart and Liberalism is coming under pressure, this collection of essay’s argues that in order to preserve the liberal order we need to acknowledge it's controversial relationship with Nineteenth Century understandings of empire. Each chapter works as a stand-alone piece, but there are some genuine points of innovation. In particular, Chapter 3 ‘What is Liberalism’ unpicks and highlights liberalism's own attempts to write a history of their own history. As a critic of liberalism, I was struck by their over simplified version of history, and their deliberate mishandling of Locke. Yet, throughout the book what Bell highlights is the need to challenge this ‘Whig’ view of the history of liberalism, a call that must be answered in order to give a full account of the liberal project.) 2. Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation, Brenden Simms (A very neat and enjoyable account of the historical roots of Anglo- European relations. Part of Simms genius is his revisionist interpretation of the way Britain has engaged with our allies. Rather then seeing Europe as encroaching on British sovereignty, Simms argues Europe needs the type of political structure on offer in the UK. In doing so he understands the uneasy relations between the two entities as being complicated by this issue of the correct organisation structure for the European Union.) 3. Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke, Richard Bourke ( Possibly one of the most significant books written on Enlightenment politics ever written, this should be on the reading list of PhD students embarking on any aspect of the Eighteenth Century, if only for the incredible footnotes. To read this it from cover to cover at just over 1000 pages, this book demands a lot of time and energy. Yet, as one reviewer noted, Bourke calls on us to rethink Burke’s understanding of the events of 1789 not as a marker in the development of conservatism, but as a concern for the unforeseen consequences of unreflective dogmatic politics.)