*This performance is live and will be available to watch for three weeks after the broadcast date to accommodate different time zones. While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline. Why? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, his latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. He also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world. He is the bestselling author of The Pity of War, Empire, The War of the World and The Ascent of Money. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work - pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.ĭrawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster.

'Insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant' New York TimesĪ compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from 'the most brilliant British historian of his generation' ( The Times)ĭisasters are inherently hard to predict. Immensely readable' Douglas Alexander, Financial Times

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