Goliath's Curse The History and Future of Societal Collapse

Luke Kemp

eAudio - 2025

“In the modern tradition of Big Books of human history like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, Goliath’s Curse provides a novel theory of civilizational development. . . . [It] feels something like reading the French economist Thomas Piketty filtered through Mad Max: Fury Road.” —Ed Simon, The New York Times Book ReviewA SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • A radical retelling of human history through the cycle of societal collapse“Deeply sobering and strangely inspiring. . . . Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins.” —Johann Hari, author of Stolen FocusIn Goliath’s Curse, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy on our species, from the e...arliest cities to the collapse of modern states like Somalia. He traces the emergence of “Goliaths”: large... more