In The Rise and Fall of the Great Empires, author Andrew Taylor provides lucid and elegant descriptions of individual empires characterises the power structures and the social and cultural values at the heart of each, and identifies reasons for their rise and eventual fall. He also looks at some recurrent themes in the history of the empire: the ways in which imperial structures collapse, their reliance on single, powerful individuals, and the way they cope with disparate peoples and religions within their borders.
