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Doom

The Politics of Catastrophe

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Doom

Auteur(s): Niall Ferguson
Narrateur(s): Niall Ferguson
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"All disasters are in some sense man-made."

Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters.

Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster 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 in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.

In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation.

Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them.

Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.


* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of images and tables from the book. Politique Sciences politiques Troubles et maladies Moyen Âge Chine
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An excellent survey of pandemic problems. A blending of sense with history and literature. Great!

Brilliant

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Not as well crafted and not nearly as well edited as Ferguson's other books, Doom seems a rush job. Full of excruciating detail and asides.

And yet, interspersed among the roundabouts, some great insights into disaster and especially the response to Covid.

so frustrating but worth the read

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The book is a general outline of the history catastrophes alongside some writing on networking, and finished off by predictions of the future and implicit book recommendations.

Somewhat underwhelming

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the post production is terrible. I could barely hear the narrator. otherwise a great book.

poor volume, I could barely hear.

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Compared to Ferguson's other books, this one seemed very scattered and poorly thought out. Almost as if it was rushed to shelves to take advantage of a pandemic.
Also, while I share Ferguson's concerns regarding tackling climate change to the exclusion of all other problems, he keeps going after that Thunberg girl, and it is always a bad look when, instead of explaining his concerns, he contents himself to dunk on a little girl, as if she alone is the climate change movement. It's pretty pathetic.

Disjointed and Rushed

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