| International Standard Book Number |
9780593321355 (hardcover)
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| International Standard Book Number |
0593321359 (hardcover)
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| Personal Name |
Kemp, Luke (Senior research associate), author.
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| Title Statement |
Goliath's curse : the history and future of societal collapse / Luke Kemp.
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| Edition Statement |
First U.S. hardcover edition.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.
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| Physical Description |
viii, 579 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm.
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| General Note |
"A Borzoi book" -- Title page verso.
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| General Note |
"First published in 2025 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin General"--Title page verso.
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| Bibliography, Etc. Note |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 459-557) and index.
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| Formatted Contents Note |
Introduction: a people's history of collapse -- Part one. Dawns and ends. Hobbes's delusion -- Collapse for 99 per cent of human history -- From hunting and gathering to being hunted and gathered -- Abandoned experiments I : failed farmers -- Abandoned experiments II : voting with feet and fire -- Goliath rises -- Goliath's curse -- Part two. Imperial march and fall. Gang warfare -- Broken bronze -- Shattered obsidian -- The rise and fall of the Chinese Goliath -- The falls of Rome -- Fear the rise -- Colonization and collapse -- Collapse in the modern world -- Part three. Endgame. Mors ex machina -- Gaia vs Goliath -- The Death-Star syndrome -- The rungless ladder -- The roots of our endgame -- The fates of Goliath -- After the fall -- Fiat justitia, ne pereat mundus -- Epilogue: slaying Goliath.
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| Summary, Etc. |
A vast and unprecedented survey of societal collapse -- stretching from the Bronze Age to the age of silicon -- that digs through the ruins of fallen societies to understand the root causes of their downfall and the most dire consequences for our future. Stepping back to look at our precariously interdependent global society of today -- with the threat of nuclear war ever present and the world heating up faster than it did before the Great Permian Extinction, which wiped away 80-90 percent of life on Earth -- one couldn't be blamed for asking : Will we make it? Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy that stretches across five millennia, and more than 440 societal lifespans, from the first Egyptian dynasty to the modern-day United Kingdom, using the latest discoveries from archaeology and anthropology to reveal profound and often counterintuitive insights into why exactly societies fail. While books like Jared Diamond's Collapse zoom in on only a few case studies, Kemp's embrace of a 'deep systems' approach, availing himself of the largest dataset possible, allows him to discover the broader trends, and deeper causes, of collapse that pose future risks -- without abandoning the gripping historical narratives that bring these pages alive. Goliath's Curse is a stark reminder that there are both bright and dark sides to societal collapse -- that it is not necessarily a reversion to chaos or a dark age -- and that making a more resilient world may well mean making a more just one.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Regression (Civilization)
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Regression (Civilization) History.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Regression (Civilization) Forecasting.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Degeneration.
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