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Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse
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Expected 23 Sep 25Win a free print copy of this book!
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25 copies available
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A vast and unprecedented survey of societal collapse—stretching from the Bronze Age to the age of silicon—that digs through the ruins of fallen societies to understand the root causes of their downfall and the most dire consequences for our 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 Extinction, which wiped away 80–90 percent of life on Earth—one couldn’t be blamed for Will we make it?
Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy that stretches across five millennia, and more than 440 societal lifespans, from the first Egyptian dynasty to the modern-day United Kingdom, using the latest discoveries from archaeology and anthropology to reveal profound and often counterintuitive insights into why exactly societies fail.
While books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse zoom in on only a few case studies, Kemp’s embrace of a “deep systems” approach, availing himself of the largest dataset possible, allows him to discover the broader trends, and deeper causes, of collapse that pose future risks—without abandoning the gripping historical narratives that bring these pages 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.
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 Extinction, which wiped away 80–90 percent of life on Earth—one couldn’t be blamed for Will we make it?
Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy that stretches across five millennia, and more than 440 societal lifespans, from the first Egyptian dynasty to the modern-day United Kingdom, using the latest discoveries from archaeology and anthropology to reveal profound and often counterintuitive insights into why exactly societies fail.
While books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse zoom in on only a few case studies, Kemp’s embrace of a “deep systems” approach, availing himself of the largest dataset possible, allows him to discover the broader trends, and deeper causes, of collapse that pose future risks—without abandoning the gripping historical narratives that bring these pages 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.
592 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication September 23, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 10, 2025
Thorough, timely, and readable; made for the present moment.
Given the broad general interest in the history of societal collapse and potential lessons for humanity’s future, it’s surprising how few good books there are on the subject. There’s Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), but that’s primarily academic, speaks at best indirectly to today’s challenges, and offers a conclusion (societies collapse due to diminishing returns on societal complexity) that, while insightful, still seems somewhat incomplete. There’s Jared Diamond’s Collapse (2005), but this bases its conclusions on a surprisingly small number of case studies, and subject matter specialists as well as more recent data have called into question many of the analyses (e.g. regarding Easter Island). What we’ve long needed is a book that’s at once thorough (surveying collapse throughout the vast span of human history, with a large number of case studies from different places), readable, and that also ties the lessons from past collapses smoothly into a detailed analysis of our present-day predicament (not only climate change, but also other issues such as nuclear weapons and the rapid development of AI). In Goliath’s Curse, Luke Kemp more or less provides us with exactly this book.
I’ll not spoil the book and its conclusions too much, but I’ll say a few more things. In my view Kemp does a remarkable job at explaining the history in detail while keeping the text clear, engaging, and even gripping. He engages deeply with the latest research (some of which he was personally involved in), including decades’ worth of more recent archaeological results and new large-scale data compilations which neither Tainter nor Diamond had access to. In identifying the entity that is collapsing not as “society” but rather as a “Goliath” (read the book to find out what the latter is), Kemp not only provides a compelling theory but also neatly manages to resolve some conceptual tensions that have long plagued the field of collapse research (see e.g. the conflict between Diamond and the authors of the 2009 book Questioning Collapse). Finally, he connects all this into a clearly outlined view of the present-day human predicament. He explains more clearly than most where the risks we face today are actually coming from, and, while overall pessimistic, presents clear prescriptions for how we might still turn the wheel around.
Beyond collapse specifically, the book also does well as a general “big history” book. I’d say it very much holds its own against heavy hitters like Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, and the story it tells about the history of humanity is arguably more compelling --- and certainly more timely --- than both.
5/5.
Given the broad general interest in the history of societal collapse and potential lessons for humanity’s future, it’s surprising how few good books there are on the subject. There’s Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), but that’s primarily academic, speaks at best indirectly to today’s challenges, and offers a conclusion (societies collapse due to diminishing returns on societal complexity) that, while insightful, still seems somewhat incomplete. There’s Jared Diamond’s Collapse (2005), but this bases its conclusions on a surprisingly small number of case studies, and subject matter specialists as well as more recent data have called into question many of the analyses (e.g. regarding Easter Island). What we’ve long needed is a book that’s at once thorough (surveying collapse throughout the vast span of human history, with a large number of case studies from different places), readable, and that also ties the lessons from past collapses smoothly into a detailed analysis of our present-day predicament (not only climate change, but also other issues such as nuclear weapons and the rapid development of AI). In Goliath’s Curse, Luke Kemp more or less provides us with exactly this book.
I’ll not spoil the book and its conclusions too much, but I’ll say a few more things. In my view Kemp does a remarkable job at explaining the history in detail while keeping the text clear, engaging, and even gripping. He engages deeply with the latest research (some of which he was personally involved in), including decades’ worth of more recent archaeological results and new large-scale data compilations which neither Tainter nor Diamond had access to. In identifying the entity that is collapsing not as “society” but rather as a “Goliath” (read the book to find out what the latter is), Kemp not only provides a compelling theory but also neatly manages to resolve some conceptual tensions that have long plagued the field of collapse research (see e.g. the conflict between Diamond and the authors of the 2009 book Questioning Collapse). Finally, he connects all this into a clearly outlined view of the present-day human predicament. He explains more clearly than most where the risks we face today are actually coming from, and, while overall pessimistic, presents clear prescriptions for how we might still turn the wheel around.
Beyond collapse specifically, the book also does well as a general “big history” book. I’d say it very much holds its own against heavy hitters like Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, and the story it tells about the history of humanity is arguably more compelling --- and certainly more timely --- than both.
5/5.
August 17, 2025
Reads as a very long academic paper with exhaustive examples of past societal collapses. I gained a better understanding of how the world works today. Essentially we're doomed. Luke finished by offering suggestions on how we minions may be able to influence the future and resist the Goliath's who dominate our lives.
Apart from the content, the audio book was very hard-going. It would have benefited from a professional reader.
Apart from the content, the audio book was very hard-going. It would have benefited from a professional reader.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews