In Search of a Kingdom is popular history at its finest, equal parts enlightening and entertaining, with an honest bias and point of view that will appeal to many American readers.  The central historical theme focuses on the contingent factors in the 16th century that led ultimately to a British Empire and with it an English-speaking and historically majority Protestant United States and Canada to counterbalance a Catholic and Spanish/Portuguese-speaking Latin America in the Western Hemisphere.  As Bergreen clarifies keenly, this development was far from inevitable. In particular, the fates of empires seemed to rest a great deal on the shoulders of two great English personalities, Sir Francis Drake and his backer Queen Elizabeth I, both of whom experienced improbable luck in surviving and thriving with innumerable enemies and challenges. Bergreen portrays Drake himself as almost a romantic but complicated anti-hero, adventuring around the globe and daringly raiding and taunting Spanish defenses around the Americas, thereby exposing that great empire's complacency, overextension and above all rapacious genocidal cruelty to indigenous peoples.  With a suspenseful blow-by-blow involving Spain's fuming about Drake's embarrassing piracy, the necessary execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and culminating defeat of the Armada and aftermath, In Search of a Kingdom satisfies. Against this clear progression, Bergreen also offers a rich mosaic of interesting detail and insight, sometimes even gossipy in nature. For example, the resistance of Elizabeth to marriage in light of the possible strange circumstances that led her to be expelled as a girl from the home of her father's widow, Katherine Parr, and the tragic treatment King Philip of Spain exacted on his disabled son Carlos, highlighting his character. This book is masterful in every way- narratively, biographically, psychologically, and in the way it touches on economic and geographic points.  In Search of a Kingdom is one of the best of its genre.  I am quite enthusiastic about this book and cannot believe I never really noticed this author much before.  Ten stars out of five!