The Guarded Age: Fortification in the Twenty-First Century

by David Betz

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 came to symbolize the dawn of a new era of openness and connectivity. Yet today, the world is ever more divided, demarcated, and – quite literally – fortified. We are living in a guarded age. Why and how has this happened? Where will it take us? In this book, David J. Betz explores the expansion of fortified physical infrastructure at every level of the global political economy. In cities, where security is increasingly ‘designed in’ to public buildings and spaces as they are reshaped to mitigate mass terror attacks. Within corporations, who are burying their electronic assets in deep underground caverns and behind the leaded walls of ex-nuclear war bunkers against a range of threats and feared contingencies. In many urban areas, where the default condition of civil life is to be walled, gated, watched, and guarded. Year after year, hundreds of miles of linear obstacles – walls, ditches, and watchtowers – are added to national borders. Practically everywhere you look there are signs of innovative fortification, often designed to be overlooked.  The Guarded Age  reveals the barriers which most have observed but few – until reading this book – have truly seen.

256 pages, Paperback

Published January 23, 2024

Reviews

[Deema · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Qoute that caught my eyes whilist reading David Betz article “ Civil War Comes To The West” in Military Strategy Magazine
“In terms of economic financialization, debt issuance, and consumption, the West has reached the end of the line, which means that a gigantic gap in expectation of well-being is opening. If there is one other thing that the literature on revolution agrees upon it is that expectation gaps are dangerous.”

[Sara Canedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book worth the read. I’d say about half the book was excellent very interesting and the other half wasn’t as interesting to me.