Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Very good. Gave a new perspective on how the world is endeavouring to manage Covid. Perhaps we will all learn to be ore prepared when the next pandemic arrives……

El libro llegó muy rápido, y bien.

Niall Ferguson knows how to tell a story, and has the wisdom to make it worth reading. I was a high school student during the Asian Flu epidemic in 1957 so it is more than just history to me. He rightfully compares and contrasts that experience with the past year, and wisely points out that back then people were less alarmed by disease -- with mumps, chicken pox, and measles a childhood rite of passage. Polio had just been tamed by the Salk vaccine. That generation’s exposure to epidemic risk made it easier for President Eisenhower to stay the course. Read Ferguson for an informative historical perspective. He has done it before and Doom is an admirable addition to his authoritative treatments.

It's articulate, detailed, and written in a typically English style of restraint and candour. Lots of detail, it's quite dense and heavy going at times. I've read through much of this sort of thing before, volcanic disasters, tsunamis, Chernobyl, Fukushima, the worst Air crashes, Titanic, the black death, plagues of various descriptions, covid19, Easter Island, World War 1, World War 2, the Asian Flu of 1957-58, the Challenger disaster, The Spanish Flu, aids, smallpox, vaccines, wars, famines, natural disasters, climate change, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, communist purges, millennial cults, you name it, if its a major or nearly major disaster, it's probably in here. From grey rhinos-big ugly and obvious before they arrived, to Black Swans-not easily predicted beforehand, to Dragon Kings-outsize events that don't fit on the scale, it's a very cool headed overview of disaster and doom, science, and history. In fact it's better and more detailed than most catastrophe books, with a wider range than many specialist authors can achieve in their respective fields, something the historian sometimes has an advantage over, since they don't focus on just one specialised type of disaster, such as only volcanos or only pandemics alone. Detailed analysis of covid19 of course, but some of this is already dated, with major second waves and variants yet to get underway when it was written in August -September last year 2020. But even the covid19 stuff is entertaining and enlightening, with details of origins and developments that haven't aged, only recent predictions, recent vaccines and variants are not up to date. I've read most of Ferguson's books, all of them are excellent and worth reading, and this more topical than most. He is typically English and conservative, but with an original, slightly rebellious streak that is not typically English. He references things like styles of rock music, comic books, and other things a typical academic historian might miss, such as the publication of Mad magazine and Elvis songs in the 1950s at the time of the Asian flu, or the African Ebola dance of 2014-2015, which mimicked hugging and kissing from a distance. It's a nice cultural touch that is often part of the reason his books are so popular. Not every historian is in touch with such everyday 'smelling of the roses'. My favourite historian author for 'big picture' overviews.

This work is, in my opinion a very comprehensive review of catastrophes, disasters and natural cataclysmic events. I found it well researched and well written - an excellent reference tool.