Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership - Hardcover

Like an eagle, American colonists ascended from the gulley of British dependence to the position of sovereign world power in a period of merely two centuries. Seizing territory in Canada and representation in Britain; expelling the French, and even their British forefathers, American leaders George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson paved their nation's way to independence. With the first buds of public relation techniques--of communication, dramatization, and propaganda--America flourished into a vision of freedom, of enterprise, and of unalienable human rights. In Flight of the Eagle, Conrad Black provides a perspective on American history that is unprecedented. Through his analysis of the strategic development of the United States from 1754-1992, Black describes nine "phases" of the strategic rise of the nation, in which it progressed through grave challenges, civil and foreign wars, and secured a place for itself under the title of "Superpower." Black discredits prevailing notions that our unrivaled status is the product of good geography, demographics, and good luck. Instead, he reveals and analyzes the specific strategic decisions of great statesmen through the ages that transformed the world as we know it and established America's place in it.

Conrad Black wrote acclaimed biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. He was the chairman of the "Telegraph" newspapers in Britain, 1987-2003, and founded the "National Post" in Canada, where he remains a columnist. He also writes in the "National Review Online" and "Huffington Post." He was accused of financial crimes in 2005; all 17 counts were abandoned, rejected by jurors, or unanimously vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court, though two were retrieved by a lower court judge whom the high court had excoriated but instructed to assess the gravity of his own errors. He has been one of Canada's best known financiers for 35 years and has returned to that occupation, and has been a member of the British House of Lords since 2001.