DOOM: Politics of Catastrophe PB

Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why?

While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work - pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.

Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, 'Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe' offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline.

As reviewed by GLO Europe General Director Stephen McQuoid-
'Doom and the Politics of Catastrophe is a book written by by Niall Ferguson, one of the most significant intellectuals of our generation. Ferguson takes us through a range of examples of how humanity has time and again encountered catastrophes which it failed to prepare adequately for. His catastrophes include such things as floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, plagues, wars and famines as well and minor disasters like the Chernobyl meltdown. He notes that while some disasters are purely natural, they can be aided and abetted by human incompetence and fecklessness. He includes in this some of the responses to the recent Covid 19 pandemic. The book is not dour or negative, but it is thoughtful. I was interested in Ferguson’s scepticism over lockdowns (an opinion I share). He does not pretend to offer a grand masterplan of how to deal with catastrophe but does think pragmatically and in a rounded way as to how to cope in such circumstances and he notes that humanity has a significant capacity for survival. Ferguson is always worth reading and this book, particularly in the aftermath of Covid, is a sane and useful thought experiment.'

Product details
Publisher: Penguin (7 July 2022)
Language: English
Paperback: 512 pages