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Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse
Hardcover
AnthropologyEnvironmental StudiesGeneral World History
Publisher Price: $35.00
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ISBN10: 0593321359
ISBN13: 9780593321355
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Sep 23 2025
Pages: 592
Weight: 1.70
Height: 1.70 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780593321355
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Sep 23 2025
Pages: 592
Weight: 1.70
Height: 1.70 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
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:
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.
- 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.
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