Colossus (73 page)
The incomparable Andrew Wylie and his excellent team at the Wylie Agency have expertly managed my Atlantic crossing as an author. At The Penguin Press in New York, I would like to thank Ann Godoff and my editor, Scott Moyers, whose critical reading of early drafts much improved the finished article. Equally astute were the suggestions for deletion and addition made by his counterpart at Penguin in London, Simon Winder. An author could not wish for better editors. Thanks are also due to Anthony Forbes-Watson, Helen Fraser and Stefan McGrath, not forgetting my copy editor, Pearl Hanig, Chloe Campbell, Sarah Christie, Sophie Fels, Rosie Glaisher, Rachel Rokicki and the many other indispensable Penguin employees whom the author of a book never gets to meet but nevertheless depends upon.
From its inception
Colossus
was intended to accompany a British television documentary and I should like to thank Janice Hadlow and Hamish Mykura at Channel 4 for their encouragement; as well as Denys Blakeway and the wonderful production team assembled by Blakeway Productions: Russell Barnes, Tim Cragg, Melanie Fall, Kate Macky and Ali Schilling. Thanks also to Kassem Derghan, Reyath Elibrahim, Mathias Haentjes, and Nguyen Hu Cuong.
But my biggest debt is to my wife, Susan, and our children, Felix, Freya and Lachlan, whom I have neglected unforgivably in order to write this book but who are, nevertheless, its main source of inspiration.
He just wanted a decent book to read …
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.
We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books
The quality paperback had arrived – and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
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First published in the United Stares of America by The Penguin Press New York 2004
Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Allen Lane
Published with a new Preface in Penguin Books 2005
Copyright © Niall Ferguson, 2004, 2005
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-24-195872-8
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Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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The conventional wisdom has it that democratization was bound to succeed in postwar Germany because German society was highly advanced and homogeneous and there was a clear memory of how democracy worked from the 1920s. Such comparisons overlook the extent to which the Third Reich had revolutionized German political culture with one of the most extreme
ideologies
in all history. Hitler’s Germany was a rogue regime far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Only with the benefit of hindsight does its transformation into a stable Western democracy look easy.
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The ostensible reason for the failure of the Brussels summit was the refusal of Spain and Poland to accept the relative dilution of their influence on the Council of Ministers implied by the proposed new rules on qualified majority voting. The Nice system suits them better.