In God and Gold, Walter Russell Mead argues that the most important story in world history in the last 400 years is the birth, rise and dominance of a global political and economic system resting first on the power of Britain and now on the United States. God and Gold explores why that system rose to dominate the world and where the first truly global system of culture, politics, production and trade ever seen is taking us. Beginning with an account of the 300 years war with Spain, France, Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union - WASP wars, as Mead calls them - Mead looks at the ideology as well as the power politics of Anglo-American history, framing it in the larger context of world history to explain the how English and American culture turned out to be uniquely adapted to capitalism and how those who have opposed them, from the time of Louis XIV to the present day, have developed a bitter critique of the Anglo-American world...