Book Review: Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship by Christopher Hitchens

As the title suggests, this is a history of the Anglo-American relationship from the 1800s to the early 1960-ish.

I have to admit two things that probably doesn't put me in the most favorable light.

1. I bought this book two years ago, mainly because I read another Hitchens book called No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. I actually didn't pick it up to read until last year, which indicates that it took me a year to read it.

2. One of the problems for me with this book was reading about individuals I'm not familiar with. This is more a short fall on my part versus that of Hitchens. He is simply writing about people who played a role in building a British-US relationship and I am unfortunately finding it all confusing having to deal with so many "characters."

I'm obviously not going to say, "This is a book you need to read." On the other hand, if you're interested in learning how the US and Britain went from fighting two wars with each other to becoming close allies, this is probably as good as any book to start with.

I will say this about the book: one of the themes in the book is about money. It deals with how Britain needed it and we supplied it -- often with terms that the British didn't like, but needed to accept. Zoom forward to our current economic times. The United States is desperate for money. We're looking at a $1.75 trillion budget deficit this year. The money is likely going to come from foreign investors and governments -- shall I say the Chinese. We as Americans better be careful how we deal with our current financial crisis and assure ourselves that we don't get too indebted to a foreign power. The British-US financial lending turned out okay, but that doesn't mean that the US will be as fortunate as the British were.