I tend to avoid anything popular history like the plague unless recommended here or by another scholar, but Amy Chua's Day of Empire: How Hyperpower's Rise to Global Dominance and Why they Fall is a required text for one of my classes. I read her introduction, and am skeptical of her thesis. I think she puts too much of an emphasis on the importance of toleration within Classical Rome, and kept mentally screaming Spain when she stated an intolerant civilization cannot be a world dominant power; apparently she addresses Spain in a later chapter but I have yet to get there.

I was wondering what the professionals generally think of her work. Specifically the ideas, and the thesis rather than the book itself (I know the book is going to over-generalize).