Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse

by Luke Kemp

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Philosophy, Society, Anthropology

592 pages, Hardcover

Published September 23, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Dr Luke Kemp
Research Affiliate & Former Research Associate at the University of Cambridge
Centre for Climate and Energy Policy

Luke looks at the past (civilization collapses) and future (climate change and emerging technologies) to guide policy in the present. He is an honourary lecturer in environmental policy at the Australian National University (ANU), holds a PhD in international relations from the ANU and was previously a senior economist at Vivid Economics.

Reviews

[Stan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Katia N]

Existential risks seems to be fashionable area of academic studies at the moment. The reason is obvious. I wanted to understand what a specialist in the area has to say to the wider public. This book has quenched by thirst so to speak, but left me ambivalent. It was an easy read as it is well written. But I did not learn much more about those proverbial existential risks compared to what I've already absorbed through osmosis. The most interesting part was the author's view on a long history of humanity as a the context of evolving hierarchical structures that he refers to as 'Goliath' that culminated in states. Broadly the story he tells is well known. But he widens it with global perspective (a lot of information of native American societies and institutions was interesting and new to me); also there are new tools like a database of different states through a few millenniums and their collapses that the author widely uses. Also he uses a different terminology borrowed from psychology and some of his terms I guess have been developed either by him or in his field.

Briefly, the story is that the humans were very nice to each other, egalitarian and did not have any steady hierarchies at all when they were hunters/gatherers. Occasionally an evolution would produce someone with a 'dark triad' personality (*). This person would try to grab power but would be swiftly removed or sometimes just killed by friendly and amiable egalitarian majority. However, somehow, nonone knows exactly how and why, the humanity has developed agriculture that has lead to all sorts of disasters for health, but has created an additional surplus product, population growth and a result - wealth inequality. Here all of this is told with slightly different spin: surplus is called 'lootable resources'. It could be anything of a value not only grain: any substance that is mobile, can be stored and easy to steal. In general, what has created stable hierarchical structures was 'Goliath fuel' (author's term) : Lootable resources, monopolizable weapons, and 'caged' land (borders and private ownership of land I guess). Due to all of this 'evolutionary backsliding: from Our egalitarianism' has unfortunately happened and still with us. A status has become important, states evolved as raider's tools according to the author. 'That wasteful consumption to gain and signal status easily becomes a preoccupation with growth. And people possessing 'dark triad' have become the reach and powerful accordingly.

The wars started, and External threats change our brains in another way. They make us more open to being dominated. Authoritarianism – obedience to high-status authorities and the desire to punish rule-breakers – increases when individuals face a threat to their safety and security.

Not all was bad and we have achieved some progress. But it is not a teleology: any achievement was fought by progressive part of the population. The progress has to be won. Anyway here we are. And we face a number of existential risks: nuclear, climate and AI. All of it mainly due to the Goliath. But we can fight it collectively as it is not our fate.

And the most disappointed bit was the author's proposed plan of actions. Or rather there is no proposed plan. Maybe it was very naive of me to expect something more concrete. But his broad brush ideas in this areas sounds not simply common sense, but almost impotent apart from a rhetorical flame at least in a way how it is written on the page. I can understand that this might not be the main purpose of the book. However if the author decided to include it, it would be nice to have something a bit more concrete, even example from his personal experience that might be beneficial.

This is the closest it gets to something concrete:

We must use technology to help us run open democracy at scale (with widespread use of deliberative assemblies and juries) and keep inequality in check. Those who are worried about the rise of populism need to start listening to the anger of the people around them rather than vilifying them. They need to offer a path that is more appealing than an authoritarian impulse fed by scapegoating minorities, protestors, and immigrants. That is not one based on bland pleas for hope or growth. It requires real, concrete change: introduce wealth taxes and progressive taxation; crack down on corruption (including banning legalized bribery like the revolving door between politics and industry); and give people a genuine direct say in government and workplaces through open democracy. Such changes are eventually likely to be embraced and celebrated. When people speak of ‘making America great again’ they are thinking of the 1950s, a time when the tax on the highest income bracket was over 90 per cent, unionization was high, and wealth inequality was low. When people think of the glory of Classical Greece, they are usually thinking of Athenian democracy and its egalitarian culture. Now we have the opportunity to build societies without the patriarchy and racism of the 1950s US, or the slavery of Athens, and with far greater material comfort and well-being.'

I have had a few problems with 1) 'Those who are worried about the rise of populism need to start listening to the anger of the people around them rather than vilifying them.' I sounds quite outdated. People were talking like that in 2016 maybe. Since then every single party and every politician makes a point of 'listening and not vilifying' that has actually lead to some policies that might at the end hurt the most those people who are 'listened' to. Brexit is a good example as well as what is going on in America. 2)' introduce wealth taxes and progressive taxation; crack down on corruption (including banning legalized bribery like the revolving door between politics and industry); and give people a genuine direct say in government and workplaces through open democracy' - apart from taxation the populists everywhere use the same slogans and the same language. But they mean something that might be different was this author means. As far as the voter is concerned fight with corruption and freedom does discriminate between the rhetorics of right and left.

But there rest what the author has to say is even less powerful:

'First, I propose a simple pledge to not be a dick. This is a pledge to not work for, invest in, or support any firm, institute, or individual that significantly contributes to global catastrophic risk. Don’t work for an Agent of Doom, whether it is an AGI lab, a fossil-fuel company, or an arms manufacturer. The idea that you are going to change an Agent of Doom from the inside is nonsense, and the excuse of ‘if I don’t do it someone else will’ is the sort of bullshit used by guards at concentration camps. Hold yourself to a higher standard. Stopping arms races, status races, and races to the bottom begins when each of us refuses to get trapped in them.

Corporations can and should reorganize themselves to be more internally democratic and minimize the pay discrepancies between the CEO and interns (who should be paid).

It is time to say ‘enough’. It is time to realize the bright and terrifying truth: no gods, kings, heroes, or masters are going to save us. Slaying Goliath and avoiding evolutionary suicide is, like all great achievements, going to be a collective action. It is on us. It is going to take the thankless, unglamorous work of having difficult conversations with your friends, giving up power, trusting your fellow citizens rather than a strongman leader when you’re scared, going into the streets even when you are comfortable at home, and taking an ethical stand even if it might cost you your job. Each of those little acts is another stone flung at Goliath, and each crack in its skull is a doorway to freedom. The stand will be worth it. A world free of nuclear weapons, carbon emissions, killer robots, and the threat of collapse, one full of genuine democracy and economic equality, is no utopia.'

I look forward to a moment when the corporations would reorganise themselves to avoid hierarchical structures and do the right thing. As far as the rest, I think I complied already: I am not a 'dick' in his definition and I've been having a 'difficult conversation' over here in this review.

(*)
Dark triad: Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy. Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest. Psychopathy is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits, and remorselessness - Wiki).

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads.

Mix of world history and current+future politics. Out of 450 pages (excluding notes) its roughly 3oo pages historical and 150 current day. Writing style is good anc clear in my opinion, and the notes section is very extensive. It's fairly on the left in tone as well.

Historical - On the historical side the book covers societal collapses across the world starting in the Bronze Age and going onto the fall of the European colonial empires. Kemp's main theory is that the cause of societies collapsing is a mix of increasing wealth inequality, causing ordinary people to either leave or rebel, and elite status competition which led to civil wars, coups, corruption etc. These weaken a society so when a problem arrives (mainly climatic like a drought or an earthquake, or outside invaders like the Spanish arriving in the Americas) that society can't survive it. In Kemp's view societies that are more equal and democratic are more likely to survive a crisis.

Kemp's other main theory is for the vast majority of people historically societal collapse wasn't that bad, maybe even a positive. Kemp is very positive about the lifestyles of nomadic hunter gatherers and pre-agricultural life (personally I think he over eggs it a bit). The main point is that since empires and kingdoms extracted more and more wealth from ordinary people (while helping the elite with things like tax breaks) them collapsing meant people tended to be better off. If for example you were a rural farmer the empire/kingdom you were in collapsing during the Bronze Age Collapse mainly meant the tax man showed up less and fewer soldiers rounding you up to do some forced labour for the king. In Kemp's view most of the violence in a societal collapse is from a small number of people trying to re-establish power and become the new top dog, not banditry or panic. (Speaking as a 21st century Brit, I find Kemp's view of societal collapse to be a bit too positive)

Current day/future - Here Kemp is quite doomer about the future. Mainly due to the larger nature of the threats (AI, climate change, nuclear weapons) and the the increasingly interconnected and concentrated nature of the world. His predications are either global societal collapse, an increasingly unequal autorcratic world backed up by ever stronger surveillance (probably the most likely imo), or least likely, actually solving the problems. Kemp's solutions are mainly more democracy, more transparency in politics, attempting to deal with wealth inequality with things like higher taxes and regulations on big business etc.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout history, the average lifespan of a state is 326 years. Large states that cover over a million square kilometres are more fragile lasting an average of 155 years.

This fascinating book examines history, from the ancient Akkadian empire through to modern times, to find out why states (Goliaths) rise and fall. Without going into detail, there are a myriad of reasons, but the one that the author focused on the most is wealth inequality.

The book argues that if a society doesn't collapse due to invasion, climate change, resource depletion, or plague, then it will likely collapse due to civil unrest caused by wealth inequality. As inequality rises, the competition between the wealthy 'elite' intensifies as they start to fight over extracting wealth from an increasingly immiserated society. The result is corruption and oligarchy, which eats away at the institutional fabric of society.

Another interesting factoid from the book: until about 150 years ago, living under a state wrecks the health and happiness of the average individual. Life in a neolithic society is far healthier. As an indicator, not until the second half of 20th century was the average height of a person comparable to our pre-agricultural revolution ancestors. You can also measure it in terms of life expectancy and hours spent in leisure.

The author makes the interesting point that the health and wealth of the average person after societal collapse is generally improved. This is due the levelling of societal equality and the weakened power of governing elites, which means less wealth extraction and exploitation from the population. The book uses post-Roman Britain and post-Han Dynasty China as key examples.

The book finishes by drawing parallels with today, where the richest 1 percent of the world own almost half its wealth, 'while just eighty-one billionaires possess more wealth than the poorest half of humanity' and 'the share of global wealth for the top 1 percent swelled from 25-30 percent in the 1980s to approximately 40 percent in 2022'. Good to know.

I am usually sceptical about broad brushstroke global history books, like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, but there is something to be said about zooming out and analysing overarching historical trends while acknowledging there are exceptions to every rule. I enjoyed this book because the author recognised this, and noting the focus on exploitative elites causing societal collapse, I think the book perfectly fits the contemporary zeitgeist of cost-of-living issues and rising wealth inequality causing political polarisation and extremism. This book is a warning call if nothing else.

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I'm trying to keep confirmation bias out of it, but if knowing the label made blind spots go away, we'd have a lot less of them, so this is my upfront acknowledgement. I've thought for years that hierarchy was the root of all of our social and environmental problems; I wrote a post a year or two ago about how it isn't greed or money that's the root of all evil, but hierarchy. And, well, here's a book that agrees with me and backs me up pretty comprehensively. So there.

It is pretty validating, especially since he references the relationship between hierarchy in empires and the Dark Triad -- sociopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism -- which also seemed pretty common sense to me but I'd never heard or seen anyone say before. Double so there.

Anyway. Kemp's basic thesis is that Empires Are Bad, and not only in the ways you know about already (colonialism, violence, slavery, environmental degradation, etc.), but also in ways you didn't. Example: Did you know that heights generally decreased for even citizens of empires as they grew, because the people who lived in them had worse diets and worse health? that their life expectancy declined? That when empires collapsed, while things got a lot worse for the elites who ran them -- obviously, the common people who survived generally improved their economic situation, physical health and happiness? That collapse has, generally, been a positive thing for most people throughout most of human history?

Me either, but it sure makes sense. Of course, it's the elite record of collapse we have now in our written records, so it's not the message we've been given.

I also learned that what predicts collapse isn't environmental degradation or collapsing treasuries, but inequality: the bigger the gap between the elites and the rest of the empire's citizens, the more likely it's collapse and the worse that collapse is likely to be.

This cheerier view of collapse does not extend to our current situation for a few reasons: 1) what he calls the 'rungless ladder' -- the more we 'develop,' the more we lose our prior skills, and the less we have to fall back on if our societies no longer provide the services we rely on; 2) there is nowhere for most of us to escape to as our states and the empires they belong to effectively cover the globe. So he does not suggest that we passively sit around and await the next collapse to release us from the current system, nor does he suggest stockpiling canned goods and ammunition, since those who have survived previous collapses have been those who invested in their relationships and communities, not those who had the best bunkers. Also, as others have previously argued, he points out that we have used up our easily accessible fossil fuels and it's not clear that the world could re-industrialize without them, if the collapse was significant. Rather, he lists some ideas for working against dominance and hierarchy and towards equality and democracy to make the current system and the goods it provides more sustainable and less damaging.

It's a good argument and very persuasive.

A few minor caveats:

1) He misses human exceptionalism almost entirely, but that's a big part of this.
2) He argues that states/empires no longer engage in the brutal practice of putting heads on pikes or draping human skins over walls to remind citizens of what happens when they step out of line. While technically accurate, I think this overlooks the role of homelessness, which does much the same thing. Despite all the handwringing over homelessness and the various programs meant to address it (and the non-profits, who mean what they say and actually do good work), elites and governments benefit from the visual reminder of what can happen to citizens when they don't play by the rules. Walk by a city park these days and you can see exactly what could happen to you if you don't stay in your place and do what you're told.

That aside, it's a fantastic book and I think everyone should read it, not least because I could go around saying "I told you so" for the rest of my life.

[Deb Ingley · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Luke Kemp is an Australian academic with a PhD in international relations; his current role is as a research associate at the University of Cambridge in the Centre of the Study of Existential Risk, quite salient to the title of his 2025, nearly-600 page, book Goliath's Curse. The majority of the book is a recapitulation of thousands of years of human civilization, highlighting common factors that led to societies, dynasties, empires, and eventually nation-states' collapse. His thesis is that what he calls "Goliath fuel" -- the conditions that spawn hierarchical societies, like lootable resources, weapons, and technology -- is a double-edged sword that inevitably leads to collapse of said societies once the fuel sources run dry and/or inequality increases. The last few chapters of the book are dedicated to our current era, the anthropocene, and how the seeds of our collapse are allegedly already sown, with climate change likely being a driving force.

This book was interesting at times but also a slog to get through; Kemp's writing is witty and incisive which prevents this book from reading like a textbook, though it's certainly of textbook/PhD dissertation length -- and in fact, per Google it appears this book was indeed spawned by Kemp's PhD dissertation.

That being said, I have a fair degree of skepticism for Goliath's Curse and books of a similar ilk that 1) spend hundreds of pages regurgitating human history through specific lenses, hoping that sheer volume will be evidence enough of veracity, perhaps through audience exhaustion, 2) have a relatively slim section dedicated to 'future directions', and 3) claim that if XYZ happened many times in the past, XYZ will inevitably happen again, so we're doomed regardless. History can be predictable but it can also be surprising; the most pressing problems of, and existential threats to, the global 'Goliath' of today aren't necessarily the same as the ones that led to prior collapses, and even if they are, the world of 2025 may have solutions or bypasses that weren't available then.

Further reading: existential threats
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee
Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy
Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future by Neil Shubin

My statistics:
Book 320 for 2025
Book 2246 cumulatively

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

“For most of human history, an attempt to dominate others was more likely to get you an early burial than a place in the history books.” “99% of human history occurred before the first symbols were stamped into clay.” “Ice-age foragers were taller and in better health than the farmers who took over the world.” By showing only selective evidence, you can wildly claim early humans were either murderers or peaceniks as the Hiwi had a murder rate 1,018% that of the Batek. 50% of the Ache of Paraguay died from violent causes in contrast to 0% for the Bakairi of Brazil. The author says the high percentage of violence in the Paleolithic given by Steven Pinker, “doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.” Instead, the kill rate of humans-by-humans clocks in around 2%, which is “similar to other great apes”. “That makes the Paleolithic a little safer than the modern world if we include suicide, and far safer than most other historical periods.” Part of that was because there was less lootable wealth to fight over (what nomad would schlep around lots of possessions?) – and how could you be noticeably rich back then when your resources you needed were literally coming from all over the map? Anyway, petty jealousy was one thing but war “is a modern phenomenon.” Before 8000 BCE you can see thousands of drawings of humans hunting animals but only three showing human vs. human killing.

Today a single tennis ball can be sourced from over 11 different countries, the tennis balls used at Wimbledon have travelled 50,570 miles around the world for manufacture so imagine that continuing w/o fossil fuels. “Democracy” comes from the Greek “Demos” (people) and “Kratos” (power), in the US we’d be better off today calling ourselves “Gumnazo” (trained) “Probaton” (Sheep). This book explains why violent people wear sunglasses - so you can’t tell what they are looking at.

Kemp defines Goliath as “a collection of dominance hierarchies organized primarily through authority and violence.” “The Roman Empire was the largest slave system ever to have existed, enslaving around 100-200 million people during its reign.” And between 410 and 101 BCE Rome was at war 90% of the time. “The average life span of a state is 326 years.” Larger states are more fragile, lasting an average of 155 years. The first found writing is administrative stuff from 3000 BCE Mesopotamia. Even though 90% of Romans were farmers, we mostly know about urban Rome. Fortifications appeared with agriculture – agriculture brought lootable wealth. “People didn’t just pick up the plough; they also picked up the sword.”

Fun Facts: “In London, for every year until 1800, there were more deaths than births.” Immigration kept the city alive. “It took over 4,000 years for farming to spread from Turkey to the British Isles.” I picture the ad, “Fed Ex Farming: For When It Absolutely Has to Be There in 4,000 Years.” Historically “a small priestly class emerges and begins to boss others around”. Power was shown by them as “feasts and opulent burials” or “slavery and human sacrifice.” Such leaders quickly learned they needed to control people from leaving or challenging their power fantasyland. When larger complexes historically happened in what is now the US, as in Moundville, Cahokia, and the Huhugam, the people broke it up into smaller “towns and farms” with mounds used for community events or sports. Much was done by consensus w/o bureaucratic over-centralization. The Indus Valley Civilization’s vast agricultural production zone never “developed a Goliath”. New Guinea had huge agricultural surpluses yet never did the Goliath thing, or became a state. So, agriculture is necessary but not the only thing for creating a state. Bronze swords date to 3000 BCE. This book (as does other Civ books) mentions that cereals became “the ultimate lootable resource”; as James C. Scott wrote, “grains make states”. And also mentions that if you wanted to avoid the early tax collector, you grew potatoes, squash, and sweet potato – hard to detect when they grow underground. Today’s lootable resource is data; for those who care, AI is more extractive (a.k.a. unreimbursed stolen data) than artificial. And you thought Spotify didn’t give credit where credit was due… Want to fight climate change? “One search on Google uses as much electricity as is required to power a lightbulb for 2 minutes. One query to ChatGPT is twenty-five times more costly.”

Human sacrifice was done partly to “intimidate challengers” and it did demonstrate power, as random violence often does. Historically, “those who used human sacrifice were less likely to revert to egalitarianism”. The author says random violence is (as Netanyahu and Trump today amply show) “an act that puts the ruler above ordinary morality.” “Every society has stories to justify their inequalities.” “Big kings preceded big gods” the author says, because “a hierarchy in heaven justifies a hierarchy on earth.” Damn, well said…

In war making, the battles that were won most often were done by armies “keeping their male fighters together.” This excitedly led to the motto of the Greek Army, “Never leave your buddy’s behind.” Patriarchy demanded “a glorification of male violence and rule” (e.g. Akkadian Empire) as “domination of women by men became central to the story of Goliath.”

I enjoyed how Mr. Kemp explained how oligarchic elites (like in the US) work, saying they are “over invested in the status quo and buffered from disaster” (p.146). Think of battles throughout history as being fought by 99% men and usually young men (p.156). When the US was attacked on 9/11, the American public rushed into action …and bought 250,000 US flags from Walmart the very next day. Everyone knows the best way to secure your family’s safety is flying an American flag – apparently, just seeing one will make any approaching terrorist say, “What was I thinking?”, and immediately return home chastened. Goering and today’s US leaders have long known that obedience goes up when the people fear “a threat to their safety and security.” Today: Watch out for Putin, Muslims and China because WE told you so. Yesterday: The Soviets are coming to take your freedom and your underwear. The Day Before Yesterday: Kill Them Injuns Before They Scalp You in Your Sleep!

What place has the most psychopaths? Prison (around 25% are in prison). What is second place? The Business community – psychopathy is a clear advantage for a CEO – where profit is all and morals don’t factor in to balance sheets. What happened to pacifists throughout history? You were outcompeted by Goliaths with white short-term profit for the minority replacing diverse indigenous long-term thinking for the majority. Rulers needed cronies, so desire for wealth created both compliant elites and hierarchy, and so “elite competition became endemic.”

The horse didn’t show up in the Near East until 2000 BCE – before then, “brute force and punishment” was the name of the game. Funny now the whole world has the horse, the US and Israel continue to prefer relying on brute force and punishment. It took thousands of years, the author writes, for the world to move from intimidation to administration (and far less time to move from administration back to (first British-led, then US-led,) intimidation.

Fun Facts: “Empire is just the quest of one society to control the resources and people of another.” Think of it as a pyramid scheme: “conquering neighbors and then enlisting them to conquer lands even further abroad.” Thus, “Rome was just a city that grew by conquering its neighbors”. An example of unequal exchange. Bronze is made by tin and copper – copper came from Cyprus, and tin from what is now Afghanistan. But most of history was not Bronze Age but was Wood Age. Loss of writing is central to collapse. Did you know that during the African Humid Period, the present-day Sahara Desert was lush with tons of animals? There were even boats (p.202). Did you know today there are still 6 million people speaking Mayan dialects? You take what’s urine, I’ll take what’s Mayan. Hey, did you know that Lenin and Castro were both lawyers?

When Chinese elites were unified, you’d have trouble with “corruption, tax evasion, and coups.” When their elites were divided, they’d have trouble with lack of funds and needed unity for defense. Generally, elites in China knew to keep their heads down during a regime change; that gave China such great continuity over the centuries. Thus, China didn’t really have a dark age because it never lost its writing and bureaucracy. Mycenaean Greece had a DEEP collapse and went from centuries of democracy back to kings and militancy. Hierarchies are hard to remove; their schtick is “justifying inequality”. Napoleon’s French Empire lasted only ten years, while the Western Roman one lasted over 500 years. Only about 10% of Rome’s population lived “significantly above subsistence.” Post-Rome, you get colonialism and capitalism, which gets a boost post-Black Death with the smaller labor pool. The fall of Rome increased the power of the church, and it became “the connective tissue” across Europe. Disease historically kills far more people than battle. “Jihad translates to ‘struggle’.”

A few times in this 2025 book, the author reminds you he is centrist-right – like seeing Julius Caesar only as dictator, as the opposite of Michael Parenti’s take, then saying w/o evidence that Putin is “outspoken” in wanting the Russian Empire back (p.243)., or that we should look to Syria for human displacement and not Gaza, or that Kemp calls Tucker Carlson right-wing when Carlson’s views on bipartisan permanent war, Gaza, and genocide are FAR to the left of US liberals. But to the authors credit, he does mention the US neoliberal Rape of Russia under Yeltsin, which liberals never discuss because they were all taught Yeltsin=good Putin=bad.

To defend themselves against their colonizers, Aboriginals in Australia had the boomerang. The secret of Greek Fire was jealously guarded to maintain military advantage. Enclosure was Britain’s answer to putting peasants in their place post-plague – remove the commons and the poor have nowhere to go - this brought “pauper” and “poverty” into common usage. Watermills appeared in the countryside aside streams whereas coal-powered factories were in in cities to take advantage of surplus labor conveniently caused by enclosure. In India, Brits used telegraphs and railways to gain advantage over upstarts using horses.

The Incan Empire created 25,000 miles of roads. Whites love to pretend Africa had nothing going on before their white-assed cracker invasion; instead, we should all be studying the Songhai Empire, the Bamana Kingdom, the Kingdom of Burundi, the Kingdom of Mutapa (Mwenmutapa), Kingdom of the Congo, Luba Empire, and the Zulu Kingdom instead of knowing ONLY the imaginary Wakanda. From 1500-1650, whites brought 180 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver from the Americas to Europe. If you thought slavery was wrong or you should cherish the earth and its occupants back then, you “were at an evolutionary disadvantage” and “likely to be conquered in the long term.” At the time of WWI, European white dudes “controlled around 84% of the world’s land surface.”

We were all carefully taught the binary thing that Allies were terrific while the Axis powers were all evil, and never the grey area - If ruthless domination was the new black, couldn’t Germany and Japan get in on the well-established Allied rape of the South, before moral qualms return? Hitler’s Lebensraum fantasy must be seen in the context of Hitler seeing what the Brits and Yanks had done with taking land and shit that didn’t belong to them and wanted Germany’s turn. Hitler actually said, “What India was for England the spaces of the East will be for us” and added during his planned Ostkrieg, that Nazis would “look upon the natives as Redskins.”

Leaders today know (as economist Michael Hudson has many times told us) that states soon found that it was cheaper to take people’s shit through “loans, debt, unfair agreements, and infrastructure projects” (thank you IMF and World Bank) than by conventional applied violence. “Why launch a missile or a battleship when you can rely on the law to enforce extractive arrangements?” In this way, the global south between 1990-2015 transferred $10 trillion annually to the global north (p.286). A lot of that was the massive difference in “north vs. south” wages.

Fun Facts: About 40% of the world’s borders today were “drawn up by France or Britain” for their colonial convenience. The world population of hunter-gatherers is below 5 million today. It’s hard to know for sure accurately because there are no hunter-gather conventions, I doubt they’d pay their dues, or leave a forwarding address – but they’d enjoy The Gods Must Be Crazy. Anyway, Fossil fuels were made 360 to 286 million years ago, and we are using it all up fast like Whitney Houston and Kate Moss at a Versace coke party. Know that “it would take 400 years of photosynthesis to power the modern world for one year.” Through Jeavon’s Paradox the US is combating climate change by accelerating energy use and our race to extinction to the point that of both our US neoliberal political parties follow the motto “Fuck Our Grandchildren”. I picture Trump and Epstein going – “We can?”

In terms of why I chose to read this book – collapse in our collective future – the best line came on page 299: “The threat of collapse still hangs overhead, and if it comes, will be far worse than anything that has gone before.” Yet for me I wouldn’t say IF it comes but would say WHEN it comes. You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. 98 tons of organic matter buried during the Carboniferous Period once mined and fractionally distilled yields only 1.32 gallons of gas today. Isn’t taking such things for granted fun? One might think the Industrial Revolution would lead to human freedom from back breaking slave labor but in 1833 you had kids working 12–15-hour days in hot cramped coal mines and “grisly reports of children being pulverized in machines.” What Trump, Hillary and Kamala Won’t Tell You: A Nuclear war between the US and Russia would lower world temperatures by 48-50 F leading to famines that would kill at least half the world’s population (this cheery bit from p.310). The few survivors would then deeply wish for a crash course in basic foraging and growing stuff to eat.

One EMP could take out the mainland US. Imagine no electrical infrastructure. Of course you’d still have coal mines, oil rigs and stored gas. Speaking of cheery shit, page 338 shows how human species are going extinct “10,000x times quicker than they would otherwise because of human activity. Insects are dying out 8x faster than birds and mammals (why I use non-insect attracting red exterior lights.) Our collective future will mean the end of economic growth but as Walden Bello said a decade ago, the poorest countries still must undergo economic growth to lift themselves from misery. Soon will be the forced end of the growth fetish, and conspicuous consumption. In 2014 alone, 3.3 billion people were passengers on aircraft, that number rose to 5 billion in 2024. That’s gonna stop. Jared Diamond believes the human race will collapse before 2050. Every calorie you eat presently takes 10 calories of fossil fuels, after collapse, lots of starvation w/o fossil fuel inputs. Fossil fuels get subsidized by $7 trillion per year which averages 7% of global GDP. Let’s subsidize our children’s extinction tomorrow for a better return for us today. “Today 5.7 billion (think 71% of the globe) live in an autocracy.” How many of these present autocracies were openly financed by the US? Anyway, the UK now has 4 to 6 million CCTV cameras. That’s one camera for every 10 UK citizens. 99.9% of all the species that have ever lived, are gone (p.409). From 1944 to 1963, the highest US earners were taxed at 90% (today it is 37%). Three quarters of stock market trades are done by algorithmic trading.

Our future will be one of three things: self-termination, or a “a world in chains”, or the obvious reversing of inequality and instead living Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. In conclusion, the author echoes eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen by saying, “our Global Goliath will die explosively unless we kill it first.” But then Kemp changes direction by saying “Goliath ends when civilization begins.” Too bad he didn’t define “civilization” – his sentence is a death sentence for those of us who see Western Civilization itself as Goliath. Nor did the (British) author deeply discuss the central role of capitalism in driving this racing toward extinction. Anyway, great book because I still learned a lot and you can too.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is essential reading for anyone concerned about where humanity is headed. Kemp's prose is clear and direct, his research is exceptional, and his message is urgent without being paralyzing. I strongly recommend.

I transitioned my career into the existential risk field this year, so I was eager to read "Goliath’s Curse" to gain a better understanding of the global catastrophic risks we face. Also, for full transparency, I love history books. I minored in history in college for funsies, so I’m partial to historical reads which, let’s be honest, can be dense and dry. That said, this was not that. This book engaged and fascinated me throughout. It's academically rigorous without being a slog, combining scholarly depth with genuinely accessible storytelling.

The book opens with historical vignettes — like the emptying of the prehistoric megacity Chatalhoyuk and Roman peasants unaware their empire was crumbling around them — before building to data-driven analysis. It’s about two-thirds detailing historical patterns followed by one-third examining our current predicament (and then a ton of notes). This structure grounds the abstract concepts we’re grappling with today in human experiences from the past, and builds a foundation for his conclusions on evidence spanning millennia.

The central premise is that "Goliaths" are hierarchical societies built on domination and wealth extraction that ultimately lead to their own destruction. Analyzing hundreds of civilizations across thousands of years, Kemp identifies inequality and extraction by elites as the consistent drivers of collapse. Corrupt ruling classes more concerned with protecting their own power and ability to loot the people (which eventually becomes a competition between them as lootable resources become more scarce), weakened their empires/states to reduce the risk of coups, creating vulnerabilities that cemented their fates. Psychopaths.

The data show states last an average of 326 years, and the largest ones are even more fragile, collapsing after just 155. But here's the twist: Collapse tends to not be devastating for ordinary people the way we’ve been made to believe. Archaeological evidence shows populations often emerged from collapses with improved health and quality of life, freed from taxation, oppression, and forced labor.

Key takeaway: More democratic societies prove more resilient, while extreme inequality consistently precedes failure. Who could have imagined?

Now we get to the doom and gloom of our current moment. Maybe sit down for this part. The Goliaths today are not independent monoliths but deeply intrenched systems. We live in a single, interconnected global network where the failure of one Goliath could cause a complete system collapse that would be swift, global in scope, and potentially irreversible. “Too big to fail” gets bandied about a lot in reference to capitalist systems (think the corrupt U.S. financial system), but that doesn’t mean they can’t fail; rather it means catastrophe if they do.

So, what are we facing? Nuclear weapons, engineered pandemics, artificial general intelligence (or artificial general cognition, as Kemp prefers), and climate change (Earth is heating faster now than before the Great Permian Extinction that wiped out around 85% of life). Altogether, we currently face unprecedented existential risk. Fuck. Also, modern populations lack survival skills, and we have nowhere to flee — unless you’re on the access list for Peter Thiel’s massive New Zealand bunker. Fuuuuck.

Still, despite these dire warnings, Kemp ends with some hope and a call to action. He argues humans are fundamentally egalitarian. We lived in fluid, cooperative societies for hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture enabled extraction-based hierarchies. Our path to survival involves democratic control of our modern Goliaths, reducing inequality, and building resilience through justice. For individuals, Kemp’s request: "Don't be a dick." A philosophy I have aimed to live by.

Final plea: Don’t support the companies, politicians, and billionaires who imperil us. Speak with your feet, your wallet, and your votes. Demand your government take action to protect "We the People" and our planet. It’s not too late to make our world more resilient, we just need to understand what we’re facing and fight it together. Or we don't and killer robots take us out. We have options, is what I'm saying.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and important book. Well researched, it should be widely read and understood.
Kemp sets out the history of societies and the development of ‘Goliaths’ - usually large scale entities dominating large populations. Using a range of evidence Kemp posits that empires and other entities, while great for the elites, are usually deleterious for the masses; and that collapse usually improves things for the many.
He outlines the current threats to our world and societies and suggests necessary action needed to save humanity from final destruction.

[Amanda books_ergo_sum · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fascinating critique of inequality.

👉 Basically, high inequality causes civilizational collapse.

And he's got receipts. This (~950 page) book was a detail-heavy history examining societies all over the world going back to Neanderthal times. Comparing:

▪️ "Goliath" societies: social hierarchy, wealth inequality, extractive practices, environmentally destructive (pro tip: they tend to have pyramids; think Egypt, the Aztecs, Babylon, Cahokia, etc), to

▪️ Egalitarian societies: highly reciprocal, non-hierarchical, communal, non-extractive, environmentally friendly (think most indigenous North American communities and Germanic tribes)

In our popular imagination, these "Goliath" societies are the height of civilization. But actually, they sucked. Sure, the elites were buried in golden sarcophagi. But for regular people: they lived shorter lives, weren't as tall, had lots of war injuries, endured sexist oppression, had smaller homes, enslaved others, and destroyed their local environment.

And. Their civilizations didn't last. Soo 👀

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sure to be a favorite of degrowthers.

My problem is that the author spends half the book making interesting observations and the other half destroying his own credibility with exaggerations and catastrophic projection. The book is filled with the following types of statements that I’m shocked made it past an editor:

“Up to a third, or maybe even half, of the population” so the supported ceiling is 30, but the author randomly says but what if it’s 50?!

“50-95%” if the upper bound is 95 the lower must be 5 but that doesn’t fit the narrative and renders the useless number obviously useless

“Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but the number of deaths MUST have been…” in other words, here is my wholly unreliable guess

“We don’t know, but it could easily be…” or it could easily not be

“Would cost between 20 trillion dollars and 7 thousand trillion dollars” again, just obviously farcical on its face

He constantly writes a somewhat conservative estimate (we're talking about early civilization data) presumably to establish credibility, then just randomly adds “OR EVEN!” and makes up some much worse number to support his narrative.

It’s sort of classic doomer stuff. He cites actual data, extrapolates that data to the worst possible scenario, then writes a long narrative based on his catastrophic conjecture and expects you to forget that the reliable data he started with isn’t actually supporting the end of the world scenario he describes.

Two stars instead of one because it was engaging and entertaining.

[Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Goliath’s Curse" is an ambitious, sweeping examination of societal collapse—what causes it, who benefits from it, and why, time and again, we seem unable to stop the cycle. The book interrogates deeply embedded assumptions about civilization, power, and human nature, beginning with a direct challenge to the Hobbesian worldview that without centralized authority, society inevitably descends into chaos.

Rather than accepting that humans are inherently selfish or violent in the absence of control, the author proposes that inequality—not the absence of authority—is the root of societal breakdown. In more equal societies, when disaster strikes—be it war, famine, or natural calamity—people tend to respond with collective resilience and mutual aid. In contrast, in deeply stratified societies, collapse tends to be followed by rebellion and resentment, often because the existing order is already extractive and oppressive.

At the heart of this book lies a disturbing but compelling idea: human societies naturally gravitate toward egalitarianism, but time and again, power is seized by high-functioning sociopaths—those capable of suppressing empathy in pursuit of control. These individuals construct hierarchies and systems of domination, centralize wealth, and manipulate societal values to uphold inequality.

The book offers a historical lens into how these dynamics emerged—particularly through the cultivation of “lootable resources.” Once groups could accumulate and steal food, land, or gold, power hierarchies developed. Societies evolved into competitive arenas for conspicuous displays of wealth: feasts, jewelry, monuments—all signaling elite status, often at the expense of the broader population.

Over time, this gave rise to a phenomenon the book calls "elite overproduction"—a surplus of ambitious elites fighting for limited spots at the top. As society becomes more stratified, internal elite competition intensifies, destabilizing the system. Ironically, many populist uprisings and revolutions aren’t started by the poor—but by these counter-elites. Think Lenin. Think Castro. Think Caesar. And yes, think Trump—a billionaire who styled himself a voice of the working class.

Modern elites, especially those in Silicon Valley, replicate this pattern. They brand themselves as insurgents or disruptors, not to dismantle the system, but to capture it—undermining institutions like the FTC and antitrust bodies to consolidate more control. It's a familiar game: exploit public anger, claim outsider status, and further entrench elite dominance.

The book highlights how this elite manipulation corrodes institutions and erodes public trust. Media, politics, and public discourse become battlegrounds for narratives designed to maintain inequality while labeling any alternative as “radical.” When candidates like Zohran Mamdani propose policies such as rent freezes, public groceries, or taxing the rich, they are dismissed not on the merits—but because they threaten the fragile center of elite consensus.

And what is this “center” anyway? A place where billionaires buy influence, homelessness rises alongside stock markets, and essential needs like housing and healthcare become luxuries. As the author argues, the "center" is not a neutral space—it's a curated illusion, propped up by media owned by the same class that benefits from the system.

The terrifying conclusion is this: elites are not incentivized to fix broken systems. They are too invested in the status quo to change course, even as it burns around them. Collapse, for them, is preferable to reform—so long as their power remains intact. Whether it's ignoring climate change, resisting democratic reforms, or promoting dangerous techno-utopias like AGI, their decisions often prioritize control over collective survival.

Take the current AI boom. Framed as progress, it’s really a top-down push by elites to restructure the economy in their image—replacing human labor with machine intelligence. The public never asked for this. Most Americans are skeptical or outright hostile to AGI. And yet, here we are—paying for the data centers, the electricity, and the infrastructure with our tax dollars, only to be told that the models built on our data are coming for our jobs.

"Goliath's Curse" reveals a brutal truth: we live in a system not built by or for the people, but for those most ruthless in pursuing power. And if our society continues to reward sociopathy over empathy, extraction over stewardship, and illusion over truth—then collapse isn't just possible. It's inevitable.


4.8 stars

[Michelle van Schouwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of societal collapse is instructive, and Kemp also squarely takes on the current global situation, in which the most serious forms of collapse will affect nearly everyone. Whether authoritarianism, climate, AI, nuclear war, or other combination (or single disaster) ignites the dreaded conflagration, the results are likely to be planet-wide.
But Kemp also walks the reader through all the ways we must work to conquer the new "Silicon Goliath" while we still can. Strongly recommended.

[Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 In your face Diamond. Dream on Hobbes. Suck it Pinker, "the darker angels of our nature are flying us towards evolutionary suicide."! But fear not, there are paths we can choose that will allow us to emerge from our next collapse and this book is your field guide.

Indeed, Goliath's Curse provides a desperately needed, thoroughly researched, scholarly, accurate (I'm looking at you, peddlers of misinformation named above) history of why societies rise and fall. All too often pundits and historians gleefully remind us that 'humans are violent, greedy, and competitive', and that's just how it has always been, is and always will be. Mr Kemp's book provides one of the most comprehensive rebuttals to this trope that I have read, and I've read a bunch of them.

Let me be clear, the history presented can get downright depressing, especially in the mid to later chapters as the author approaches and dissects our current challenges and existential threats. However, I beg you to hang in there - I promise you, ultimately you will be inspired.

Essentially I came away with this truth seered into my conscious:
"For most of human history we lived in fluid civilizations. These were webs of exchange, mutual aid, and reciprocity that were full of mobile, egalitarian, social individuals with a strong aversion to being dominated. Status competition lurked underneath these arrangements but was kept in check through counter-dominance strategies and sheer environmental circumstances. Collapse occurred only when environmental shocks disconnected populations or severed them from the wider civilization." Mic drop.

Chapter 23 is a magnificent summation of his thesis but only works because he has built the case with thoroughly footnoted historical  facts. Despite the realization that presently we are in a dark and brutish period and facing numerous existential threats that could end us, I ultimately felt positive and empowered! Partly because... well, this book made me feel small, and that's a wonderful thing.

I think it's healthy to rebalance our perspective on the scale of human history. At least for me, I find it grounding when confronted by daily news reports of our desperate circumstances and accelerating decline to be reminded that homo sapiens have been at it for 200,000 years. However, I mostly find comfort and empowered because as this book methodically lays out, history is on the side of the masses. Our society and the wealth that has been stolen by the .01% was and is generated by the people. 

"The tireless labor and courage of underpaid workers in schools, hospitals, mines, and factories." "...the myriad underpaid and unpaid individuals who provide the data and train the machines." OUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS ARE NOT BECAUSE OF THE 1 PERCENT!

I have wonderful news, there is a path out of the mess we are in and away from the Goliath model and it's not built on hopium. This book provides clear, effective and previously utilized policies, and course corrections that will soften what currently promises to be a very hard if not catastrophic landing. Let's get to work and/or keep on working on slaying Goliath.

PS Trigger warning - if the idea of 'socializing' anything makes you uncomfortable then this book may cause irritation; the good kind. I ask that you carry on reading and keep an open mind. I would be curious to hear your thoughts, once you have completed the book.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has a good grasp on human nature and the development of dominance hierarchies in settled states and empires. Human beings spent over 100,ooo years as highly egalitarian hunter-gatherers and the last 8000 with growing dominance hierarchies of money, power, gender, and race in state societies, or what the author calls Goliath. Goliaths usually arise when a lootable resource that people depend on is under the control of an elite, and escape is not an option for the population. This began to come about during the agricultural revolution and is a mark of most state societies. Golaiths are the empires of history that often called themselves civilized but largely perpetrated genocide, slavery, human sacrifice, and oppression of the poor. For Elites, life might be good, but not for the majority of ordinary people. Often, when goliaths fall, the yoke of oppression is lifted for ordinary people; however, elites write history and are usually horrified at such affairs as people rising up against "their betters".

Now Goliaths in the modern era have nukes, and a rapacious thirst for resources, and are wreaking environmental destruction, and new horrors like new pandemics, serious pollution, and climate change are making the current situation grow dire. Goliath falling this time might be an existential risk for humanity. The author argues for democratization and turning the tide against growing inequality as maybe a way out. It would have to go against currents in the other direction but that would be a way out.

[Peter Sidell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stark view of future. Made me glad I am old. But I worry for my children and grandchildren. Very well researched and thought out. At the end he provides a prescription for saving the future for human beings but it does seem improbable. Of course we can hope for someone with brilliant insights. It seems population always grows to fill its niche and become threatened. Now the threats are more existential.

[Brandon Lighty · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you haven’t read Marcel Mauss, David Graeber, or James Scott (and to a lesser extent Robert Putnam) this will likely be a pretty informative and quick read. If you have read these writers, and have waded through the criticisms of them, this book quickly turns into a slog of somewhat incoherent points and confusing ideology. At its worst it is a well written work of either paleoconservatism of anarchoprimitivism which cherry picks points from other books leading to a contradictory mess. At its best it is a somewhat insightful revisionist history which allows one to think of collapse from different class perspectives.

I struggled between two or three stars here because I really did not enjoy this book but I think the main reason for that is because the book was not written for someone who has read the primary sources the author used. In the end I decided on two stars simply because of the tedious nature of writing where even internally there are contradictions; in one chapter the author rails against using the term complexity to describe “civilizational advancement” because non-state societies were just as, if not more complex and then only a few chapters later describes how “simple” state structures developed into more “complex” organizing frameworks that could then administer over larger areas. This is clearly is an issue of the former chapter drawing from one thinker and the latter drawing from a different one, but this leads to a quite confusing and incoherent set of analyses and criticisms.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful. It gave me hope.

[David Healy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do we not have enough Doom Grifter already?

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic stuff! The first two parts are like a better version of Jared Diamond's Civilizations Rise and Fall series (particularly Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. The third part is reminiscent of Tony Ord's The Precipice. For those who haven't read those books, Goliath's Curse takes us from our human evolutionary origins, through the building of modern society, and finally into possible futures based on this trajectory.

The focus of Kemp's story is what he refers to as goliaths, which are societies/states usually featuring a dominance hierarchy that doesn't reflect our evolutionary nature (a dominance hierarchy resembles a pyramid scheme). Once humans settled down, dominance hierarchies became the norm. Kemp explores how these goliaths collapsed in the past to find relevancies to our modern society, a global goliath. As the scale of goliath has increased, so too has the risk. This risk has the potential to be existential.

This book provides critical insight to where we've gone wrong as humans and how to reverse course. Typically you'd have to read at least a handful of separate books to gain the knowledge that Kemp has brilliantly arranged in Goliath's Curse. His research is not only expansive - pulling from numerous disciplines - but also meticulous and nuanced. I think it's right in the middle between the writing styles of academia and popular non-fiction. Paired with the length, that might make this a challenge for people who aren't particularly interested in subjects like anthropology, history, and philosophy. Despite that, I'd be hard pressed to think of another single book that better encapsulates the reality we're living in.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favourite book of all time.

Absolutely stupendous, tying everything important together in an absolutely awesome, inspiringly intelligent and coherent way. Did everything I was hoping my masters diss would be, and more, but with the finesse of someone who is a veteran academic in the field of existential risk studies.

While slow to get going, it was so so worth it to persevere, and by halfway through I was flying, picking up and making use of the nuggets that were littered in the earlier parts. Part 3 of the book that focused on the future was majestic (I'm running out of adjectives to express how impressive it was). Looked in depth at many different ways horrifying risks are crystalysing, how it got to this point, very well thought out what could happen next and then what the alternatives to escape it could be. Admittedly I did find some suggestions in the final chapter to be more than a tad naive, but at the same time it was refreshing to see a much more steelmanned collection of suggestions than most futurologists manage to come up with.

Read this book, it is the most important history, politics, futurology and call to action book you will ever read.

[Suzanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is dense and broad, engaging and informative. It examines the collapse of states, but rather than a close-up look of a few examples, Kemp explores global trends of societal collapse. Climate change, invasion, resource depletion, and disease are common causes, and if those don't take down a state, civil unrest due to wealth inequality will do it. It is a bit unsettling seeing the parallels between dozens of ancient collapsed states and modern civilization, but that is Kemp's main point. We're at the tipping point.

[Shevon Quijano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yikes. This was excessively detailed and academic. I read it as an audiobook and found it hard to stay engaged. It felt like the author overly idealized the ancient hunter gatherers as peaceful, egalitarian, democratic peoples. We will never live like that again. This is not actionable information. Author needs to condense this book by at least 50%.

Three stars for the effort it took to write this book.

[Morts. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25*

[Alis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Acum că am terminat cartea asta…everything makes more sense now. Ce carte!

[Ethan Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sobering but hopeful

[Paul Womack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long book, thought provoking, hopeful but not overly optimistic as to the future of our western, industrial, planet destroying civilization.

[Paul Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough review of cultural and population collapse since the beginning of time and an insightful work as to how collapse both works and effects all species, Kemp also offers a pathway for hope as we continue in the warming crisis.

[Matthew Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were like 6 or 7 chapters of this book that made me need a shower