Where is a David When You Need One?

Kemp, Luke.  Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.  New York: Alfred A. 

        Knopf, 2025.  ISBN: 9780593321355

 

Are you ready for another book about how civilizations collapsed in the past?  Maybe you are ready to move beyond Jared Diamond's Germs, Guns, and Steel.  If so, Luke Kemp has a tome to weigh down your reading pile in Goliath's Curse.  

 

Luke Kemp opens with in into to terms - a Goliath is used as a synonym for civilization and just as we use civilization to mean specific cultures and the concept of culture, Kemp does the same with"Goliath."  Next Kemp gets into a disagreement with Thomas Hobbes and his "social contract" theory of government followed by a number of chapters dealing with how early hunter-gathers and early farmers dealt with authority figures.  Then Kemp spends several chapters looking at various "Goliaths" such as China, Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the like.  Kemp then moves into the endgame where we dwell and looks at how we have to deal with a global goliath that may or may not spell the end of civilization as we know it when it collapses.  But he does end with some hopeful scenarios.  We will just have to see if he is overly optimistic.

 

So if you are in the mood for some heavy reading that presents a different light on the past, pick up Luke Kemp's Goliath's Curse and settle in.