'James Vernon is the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught the history of modern, imperial, Britain for over thirty years on both sides of the Atlantic. Vernon is the author of Politics and the People (1993), Hunger: A Modern History (2007) and Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern (2014), and the editor of Rereading the Constitution (1996), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (2011) and the 'Berkeley Series in British Studies' for the University of California Press.'

• Preface; Part I. 1750–1819: The Ends of the Ancien Regime: 1. The imperial state; 2. An englightened civil society?; 3. An imperial economy and the great transformation; Part II. 1819–1885: Becoming Liberal and Global: 4. A liberal revolution in government; 5. An empire of free trade?; 6. Practising democracy; Part III. 1885–1931: The Crises of Liberalism: 7. The British imperium; 8. The social problem; 9. The rise of the mass; Part IV. 1931–1976: Society Triumphant: 10. Late imperialism and social democracy; 11. Social democracy and the cold war; 12. The ends of social democracy; Part V. 1976–: A New Liberalism?: 13. The neoliberal revolution; Glossary.