Goliath's Curse
The History and Future of Societal Collapse
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4.0 • 10 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“In the modern tradition of Big Books of human history like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, Goliath’s Curse provides a novel theory of civilizational development. . . . [It] feels something like reading the French economist Thomas Piketty filtered through Mad Max: Fury Road.” —Ed Simon, The New York Times Book Review
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CONVERSATION AND KIRKUS • A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB'S MUST-READ BOOK • SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • A radical retelling of human history through the cycle of societal collapse
“Deeply sobering and strangely inspiring. . . . Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins.” —Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus
In Goliath’s Curse, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy on our species, from the earliest cities to the collapse of modern states like Somalia. He traces the emergence of “Goliaths”: large societies built on a collection of hierarchies that are also terrifyingly fragile, collapsing time after time across the world. Drawing on historical databases and the latest discoveries in archaeology and anthropology, he uncovers groundbreaking revelations:
More democratic societies tend to be more resilient.In our modern, global Goliath, a collapse is likely to be long-lasting and more dire than ever before.Collapse may be invisible until after it has occurred. It’s possible we’re living through one now.Collapse has often had a more positive outcome for the general population than for the 1%.All Goliaths contain the seeds of their own demise.
As useful for finding a way forward as it is for diagnosing our precarious present, 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.
Customer Reviews
Goliath’s Curse
The historical review of the repeated and multiple collapses of powerful states (Goliaths) is quite interesting. As is the conclusion that this has been happening repeatedly for 6-8 thousand years. The drivers proposed are all unsurprising and there appears to be plenty of evidence supporting the thesis of the author. The second half of the book focuses on our current global “Goliath” and points out the obvious point that our interconnectedness, technology, transport, concentration of wealth etc have increased the likelihood of catastrophic failure on a global basis. Global warming, pandemics, nuclear weapons, general AI, ubiquitous plastics pollution etc etc are just some of the list and provide excellent illustrations of what the global collapse might look like. The author points out that almost every Goliath collapse is preceded by wealth and power inequalities often leading to citizen revolt and destruction of wealth/power elites. This is clearly happening again. Whether there is a revolt this time is debatable with media manipulation of the proletariat reaching smothering levels (and that’s in a purported democracy - the US). In fact, the revolution doesn’t even need to be violent. Taxing the rich would immediately flatten these imbalances. But will those who control the media, internet and AI allow it to happen? Ultimately the Goliath Curse thesis is ultimately unsatisfying because it fails completely the historically unique demographic moment we are about to find ourselves. Population growth has finally stopped in all developed countries and will peak world wide in the 2050-60 timeframe. This will have massive implications for the structure of our Global Goliath. Economics, assumptions of growth, environment, political stability, productivity, housing, food needs, etc, etc. Yet the author doesn’t mention it even once. It’s a huge miss and makes this book obsolete from the get-go.