Success Is Never Final

A strikingly fresh account of power struggles in early modern Europe by “the finest military historian currently writing.” — Reviews in History. The British politician Enoch Powell claimed that “all political lives end in failure” while, according to Winston Churchill, “success is never final.” In these brilliant essays on the history of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Geoffrey Parker finds an unusual number of cases of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Parker examines three defining developments of the period–the decline of the Spanish empire, the emergence of modern warfare, and the rise of the Protestant Reformation–that demonstrate the paradox of success giving way to failure. Success Is Never Final offers a rich and original view of the limits of power. Lucid, provocative, and engaging, this stimulating collection could only be the work of one of the world’s leading historians.