Doom
The Politics of Catastrophe
(Sprache: Englisch)
"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....
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....
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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.
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1The Meaning of Death
This fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest.
-Hamlet
We Are All Doomed
"We're doomed." This line, uttered by the Caledonian Cassandra of the British television sitcom Dad's Army, Private James Frazer, was one of the running jokes of my youth. The trick was to say it at the most incongruous moment possible-when the milk had run out or you had missed the last bus home. There's a wonderful scene in one episode ("Uninvited Guests") when Frazer-played by the great John Laurie-tells the other members of his Home Guard platoon a bloodcurdling story of a curse. As a young man, he was anchored off a small island near Samoa, where-according to his friend Jethro-there was a ruined temple, inside which stood an idol decorated with a giant ruby "the size of a duck's egg." They set out to steal the ruby, hacking their way through dense forest. But just as Jethro laid his hands on it, they were confronted by a witch doctor, who cursed Jethro with the words "DEATH! THE RUBY WILL BRING YE DEATH! DE-E-ATH."
Private Pike: Did the curse come true, Mr. Frazer?
Private Frazer: Aye, son, it did. He died . . . last year-he was eighty-six.
We are all doomed, if not necessarily cursed. I shall be dead by 2056, at the latest. My additional life expectancy at the age of fifty-six years and two months is, according to the Social Security Administration, 26.2 years, which would get me to eighty-two, four years less than Frazer's cursed friend. Rather more encouragingly, the UK Office for National Statistics gives a man of my age an additional two years, with a 1 in 4 chance of making it to ninety-two. To see if I could improve on these numbers, I went to the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator, which bases its estimate on a detailed questionnaire about one's
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lifestyle and family history. Living to 100 told me I probably wouldn't make a century, but I had a better-than-even chance of living thirty-six more years. It might, of course, have been another story if I had caught COVID-19 back in January, as the disease has a fatality rate of 1 or 2 percent for my age group, and perhaps slightly higher if we factor in my mild asthma.
To die at fifty-six would certainly be a disappointment, but it would be a good result by the standards of the majority of the 107 billion human beings who have ever lived. In the United Kingdom, where I was born, life expectancy at birth did not reach fifty-six until 1920, exactly a hundred years ago. The average for the entire period from 1543 until 1863 was just under forty. And the United Kingdom was notable for its longevity. Estimates for the world as a whole put life expectancy below thirty until 1900, when it reached thirty-two, and below fifty until 1960. Indian life expectancy was just twenty-three in 1911. Russian life expectancy fell to a nadir of twenty in 1920. There has been a sustained upward trend over the past century-life expectancy at birth roughly doubled between 1913 and 2006-but with numerous setbacks. Life expectancy in Somalia today is fifty-six: my age. It is still low there partly because infant and child mortality is so high. Around 12.2 percent of children born in Somalia die before they reach the age of five; 2.5 percent die between the ages of five and fourteen.
When I try to put my own experience of the human condition into perspective, I think of the Jacobean poet John Donne (1572-1631), who lived to the age of fifty-nine. In the space of sixteen years, Anne Donne bore her husband twelve children. Three of them-Francis, Nicholas, and Mary-died before they were ten. Anne herself died after giving birth to the twelfth child, who was stillborn. After his favorite daughter, Lucy, had died and he himself had very nearly followed her to the grave, Donne wrote his Devotions upon Emerge
To die at fifty-six would certainly be a disappointment, but it would be a good result by the standards of the majority of the 107 billion human beings who have ever lived. In the United Kingdom, where I was born, life expectancy at birth did not reach fifty-six until 1920, exactly a hundred years ago. The average for the entire period from 1543 until 1863 was just under forty. And the United Kingdom was notable for its longevity. Estimates for the world as a whole put life expectancy below thirty until 1900, when it reached thirty-two, and below fifty until 1960. Indian life expectancy was just twenty-three in 1911. Russian life expectancy fell to a nadir of twenty in 1920. There has been a sustained upward trend over the past century-life expectancy at birth roughly doubled between 1913 and 2006-but with numerous setbacks. Life expectancy in Somalia today is fifty-six: my age. It is still low there partly because infant and child mortality is so high. Around 12.2 percent of children born in Somalia die before they reach the age of five; 2.5 percent die between the ages of five and fourteen.
When I try to put my own experience of the human condition into perspective, I think of the Jacobean poet John Donne (1572-1631), who lived to the age of fifty-nine. In the space of sixteen years, Anne Donne bore her husband twelve children. Three of them-Francis, Nicholas, and Mary-died before they were ten. Anne herself died after giving birth to the twelfth child, who was stillborn. After his favorite daughter, Lucy, had died and he himself had very nearly followed her to the grave, Donne wrote his Devotions upon Emerge
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Autoren-Porträt von Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is one of the world's most renowned historians. He is the author of sixteen books, including Civilization, The Great Degeneration, Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, and The Ascent of Money. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the managing director of Greenmantle LLC. His many prizes include the International Emmy for Best Documentary (2009), the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service (2010), and the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award (2016).
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Niall Ferguson
- 2021, 496 Seiten, Masse: 16,2 x 24,5 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0593297377
- ISBN-13: 9780593297377
- Erscheinungsdatum: 31.05.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
[Doom] hopscotches breezily across continents and centuries while also displaying an impressive command of the latest research in a large number of specialized fields, among them medical history, epidemiology, probability theory, cliodynamics and network theory. . . . Belongs on the shelf next to recent ambitious and eclectic books by authors like Jared Diamond, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Steven Pinker. . . . Promises to make a contribution to improving our management of future disasters. . . . Insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant. New York Times Book ReviewDoom seeks to understand why humanity, time and again through the ages, has failed to prepare for catastrophes, whether natural or manmade. . . . Forecasting, network science, economics, epidemiology, together with the psychology of leadership are all considered in a dazzlingly broad examination of the politics of catastrophe . . . Magisterial . . . [an] immensely readable book. The Financial Times
Doom covers an impressive sweep of history at a lively narrative clip and weaves a lot of disparate strands together into an engaging picture. The Guardian
We are all trying to gain perspective on Covid, and Ferguson frames the tragedy in the broadest and most bracing way, drawing on humanity s experience of all kinds of disaster, from the bubonic plague to the First World War. Sweeping in its narrative and multidisciplinary in its approach, Doom proves you can write an engaging book about a repellent subject. Sebastian Mallaby, Financial Times
Sparkling, provocative and entertaining. . . . [Doom] fizzes with ideas and nuggets of information. . . . [Ferguson] is formidably well read and culturally curious. Peter Frankopan, Prospect
[Ferguson] tackles big topics, topics of importance, and does so with energy and skill. . . . [Doom] is well-written, wide-ranging, conceptually interesting, shrewd, and good value. . . . The deep
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history is handled with care, and is gripping. . . . A crucial work that truly deserves wide attention. The Critic
Doom is an informative, amusing and thought-provoking read that puts the current pandemic in context, and is full of steadying good sense for these often hysterical times. South China Morning Post
Doom is well-researched, well-argued, and all-encompassing. Ferguson uses the depth and breadth of his knowledge to cogently argue for a new understanding of catastrophic events. . . . Reminiscent of William H. McNeill s Plagues and Peoples, [Doom] is a much-needed book on an important and pressing subject. Ferguson provides ample support for his arguments, uses an interdisciplinary approach, and offers new insights and revelations. An exemplary and thought-provoking work from a renowned author that will not disappoint. Library Journal (starred review)
[An] intensely researched . . . always entertaining account. . . . Captivating. Kirkus
Niall Ferguson puts the Covid pandemic into the broadest of historical perspectives, and reminds us that this was not the first time that humans have had to deal with catastrophic events. Drawing on a deep knowledge of global history, he catalogs the threats that mankind has faced, and the resourceful ways in which human societies have dealt with them. Francis Fukuyama
Humans have so many ways to suffer awful collective disasters that one would think we would have developed better ways of responding. In his sweeping, synthetic, engaging book, Doom, master historian Niall Ferguson explains why not and offers a path forward for better, safer, and saner responses the next time we face catastrophe. Nicholas A. Christakis
Doom is an informative, amusing and thought-provoking read that puts the current pandemic in context, and is full of steadying good sense for these often hysterical times. South China Morning Post
Doom is well-researched, well-argued, and all-encompassing. Ferguson uses the depth and breadth of his knowledge to cogently argue for a new understanding of catastrophic events. . . . Reminiscent of William H. McNeill s Plagues and Peoples, [Doom] is a much-needed book on an important and pressing subject. Ferguson provides ample support for his arguments, uses an interdisciplinary approach, and offers new insights and revelations. An exemplary and thought-provoking work from a renowned author that will not disappoint. Library Journal (starred review)
[An] intensely researched . . . always entertaining account. . . . Captivating. Kirkus
Niall Ferguson puts the Covid pandemic into the broadest of historical perspectives, and reminds us that this was not the first time that humans have had to deal with catastrophic events. Drawing on a deep knowledge of global history, he catalogs the threats that mankind has faced, and the resourceful ways in which human societies have dealt with them. Francis Fukuyama
Humans have so many ways to suffer awful collective disasters that one would think we would have developed better ways of responding. In his sweeping, synthetic, engaging book, Doom, master historian Niall Ferguson explains why not and offers a path forward for better, safer, and saner responses the next time we face catastrophe. Nicholas A. Christakis
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