Goliath’s Curse

Unlike Jared Diamond’s formative 1997 bestseller Guns, Germs and Steel, which focuses on a handful of examples (and is increasingly contested by scholars), Goliath’s Curse analyzes a massive data set through digital analysis . . . 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 . . . feels something like reading Thomas Piketty filtered through Mad Max . . . a strangely hopeful book

Ed Simon, New York Times

An excellent survey of human history through the collapses of Goliath-like kings, states and empires . . . Kemp sees a solution in the flashing warning lights; the collective means to rise up and slay the Goliaths of climate change, big tech and authoritarianism through true, progressive democracy

Ben East, Observer

A brilliant, utterly convincing account of the evolution of human society and why we are probably reaching humanity's end days

Henry Marsh, author of DO NO HARM

A comprehensive overview of societal collapse, based on the analysis of dozens of cases spanning thousands of years from the Paleolithic to today. Highly recommended

Peter Turchin, author of END TIMES

Absolutely essential reading for understanding why past civilisations collapsed, and how to protect our own from the same fate

Lewis Dartnell, author of THE KNOWLEDGE: How to Rebuild Our World After An Apocalypse

Learned, provocative and deeply unsettling . . . exceptionally powerful, undeniably impressive

Andrew Lynch, Irish Times

A deeply sobering and strangely inspiring history of how societies collapse - and how we can still save ours. Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins

Johann Hari, author of STOLEN FOCUS

Exceptional . . . This is not a book for the anxious. It tells of the collapse of empires and the potential for the implosion of human society. In his marshalling of existential risks the author Luke Kemp deploys apocalyptic prose

Mark Urban, Sunday Times

Erudite, detailed and urgent. A masterpiece of data-driven collapsology

Paul Cooper, author of FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS