Highly recommended is Blood, Tears and Folly by Len Deighton. When I read it I couldn’t help but be struck by the parallels between Britain’s fade from power and that of the U.S.

Both gained their power buy being the world’s industrial powerhouse. Both decided that more money could be made in finance and so they lent money to those who would be their rivals soon. Germany and the U.S. in the former case, Japan and China in the latter. Each let their industrial infrastructure rot.

And so they fell. By the time of the Second World War Britain could not make the instruments needed for aircraft and they had to import steel of high enough quality to armour their battleships. Most of their anti-aircraft guns were manufactured abroad.

As Mark Twain remarked, “History does not repeat, but it does rhyme”