Features September 2021
Doomed to succeed
On Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson.
Is modern life a doom machine? Do urbanization, international trade, air transport, immigration, tourism, and travel expose humans to an ever-growing threat of plagues and catastrophes? Are we killing ourselves through our cosmopolitan bustle of business, technology, immigration, cultural exchange, agriculture, and exogamous sex? The distinguished historian and transatlantic pundit-philosopher Niall Ferguson says so in this laboriously learned, encyclopedic catalogue, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.1 Taking us from the Chicxulub asteroid impact that likely killed the dinosaurs to Vesuvius, from World Wars I and...
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