Here is a description of the book:

In this major new work of synthesis and revision, Niall Ferguson argues that the British Empire should be regarded not merely as vanished Victoriana but as the very cradle of modernity. Nearly all the key features of the twenty-first-century world can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain's economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth — economic globalization, the communications revolution, the racial make-up of North America, the notion of humanitarianism, the nature of democracy. Displaying the originality and rigor that have made him the brightest light among British historians, Ferguson shows that far from being a subject for nostalgia, the story of the Empire is pregnant with lessons for the world today — in particular for the United States as it stands on the brink of a new kind of imperial power based once again on economic and military supremacy.

We have come full circle on the matter of empire: countries should be independent and self-determining, but we have learned through bitter trial and errror that there are better and worse ways of achieving this and that countries need to integrate themselves into the global economic and political order or they will fail and be a burden upon the rest of us.

The new form of "empire" is simply the reluctant recognition of this reality and the determination to do something about it. Al Barger's excellent post "Good Guys Win" augments this theme.