style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">What happened to Europe’s empires and how America emerged as the world’s policeman during the first two decades of the cold war form the subject of Michael Burleigh’s new history, in which he professes to maintain a neutral posture among imperial nostalgists and national liberation pietists. “This book will not please those who wish for a reaffirmation of their simple dogmas,” he writes in his introduction. So at times he seems to sympathise with some charismatic revolutionary leaders, at other times with US presidents seeking to make sense of a new world order. Burleigh is an equal-opportunity moralist, not an ideologue, and he stalks his prey with feline grace.