The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy, first published in 1987, explores the politics and economics of the Great Powers from 1500 to 1980 and the reason for their decline. It then continues by forecasting the positions of China, Japan, the European Economic Community (EEC), the Soviet Union and the United States through the end of the 20th century.
Table of contents

• Strategy and Economics in the Preindustrial World
  • The Rise of the Western World
  • The Habsburg Bid for Mastery, 1519-1659
  • Finance, Geography, and the Winning of Wars, 1660-1815

• Strategy and Economics in the Industrial Era
  • Industrialization and the Shifting Global Balances, 1815-1885
  • The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the "Middle Powers": Part One, 1885-1918
  • The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the "Middle Powers": Part Two, 1919-1942

• Strategy and Economics Today and Tomorrow
  • Stability and Change in a Bipolar World, 1943-1980
  • To the Twenty-first Century