A succinct, expert Pelican history of the most contentious issue of our time.
Kevin O'Rourke is Chichele Professor of Economic History at Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls College. Between 2014 and 2018 he was Research Director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a network of 1100 researchers in universities throughout Europe. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the British Academy. His previous books include (as co-author) Globalization and History- the evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy and Power and Plenty- Trade, War and the World Economy in the Second Millennium; and (as co-editor) The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe.
Valuable on the backstory is Kevin O'Rourke's A Short History of
Brexit (Pelican). As an Irish historian who divides his time
between a French village and All Souls College, Oxford, O'Rourke is
a quintessential Remainer; but he's not blind to the EU's
supranational ambitions.
*Prospect*
He recounts the history of British involvement with Europe over the
last 60 years with unique concision and clarity. He searches for
the motivations behind the Brexit vote, parsing arguments that it
was the inevitable result of structural economic factors, that it
stemmed from a misplaced backlash against rising inequality, or
that it was just a fluke brought about by political miscalculation
and opportunism. Ever the professor, O'Rourke hints that all these
views contain some truth.
*Foreign Affairs*
Crisp, clear and quietly devastating ... It might indeed be
questioned whether such a project is worth doing while the outcome
is so uncertain. But O'Rourke's book provides a bracing and
absorbing answer. As he puts it towards the end, Brexit has already
been "a hugely informative, if costly, civics lesson for the people
of Britain, Ireland, and the rest of Europe" and he is superbly
well fitted to draw out that lesson for the general reader.
*Guardian*
The 2016 referendum already feels so long ago that it is hard to
remember that a longer story was erased and forgotten amid the
fevered claims of £350m, 80m Turks and the 'easiest' deal in
history. Kevin O'Rourke painstakingly lays out the facts in A Short
History of Brexit
*Financial Times*
A Short History of Brexit couldn't have come at a better time ...
an excellent and authoritative exploration of the roads to Brexit,
one that is erudite, rigorous and highly readable
*Irish Times*
Anyone who has found themselves newly politicised by the
convulsions of British politics in general or Brexit in particular
will find this a handy primer on the events and undercurrents that
led to our present discontent. Anyone who is familiar with that
history will find something they knew, but hadn't fully
appreciated.
*Observer*
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