A vast and unprecedented survey of societal collapse—stretching from the Bronze Age to the age of silicon—that digs through the roots of past crises to understand what causes societies to fall apart, what are the impacts, and what it means for our uncertain future

Stepping back to look at our precariously interdependent global society of today—with the threat of nuclear war ever present and the world heating up faster than it did before the Great Permian Dying, which wiped away 80 to 90 percent of life on earth—one couldn’t be blamed for asking: Will we make it? Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a wide-ranging historical autopsy using the Mortality of States Index (MOROS), a unique research asset that provides an estimate of more than 440 societal lifespans over the past five millennia, from the first Egyptian dynasty to the modern-day United Kingdom. Kemp uses MOROS and the latest insights from archaeology and anthropology to reveal fascinating patterns of collapse across history.

While books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse zoom in on only a few case studies, in Goliath’s Curse Kemp embraces a “deep systems” approach, assessing the largest dataset possible to discover the broader trends, and deeper causes, of collapse that pose future risks—without abandoning the gripping historical narratives that bring these words alive.

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.