- Published: 25 May 2023
- ISBN: 9780241407509
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 208
Why Empires Fall
Rome, America and the Future of the West
- Published: 25 May 2023
- ISBN: 9780241407509
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 208
Two experienced scholars lucidly engage in contemporary debates about the future of the West and its parallels to the Roman Empire. This is comparative history done right.
David Potter, author of DISRUPTION: WHY THINGS CHANGE
A useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather's scholarship shines through its pages ... an interesting polemic.
Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph
A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work.
Linda Colley, Financial Times
Enlightening ... Heather and Rapley's book is not pessimistic. It does not predict a collapse of the West analogous to the tragic collapse of Rome in the fifth century. On the contrary, it offers a penetrating historical analogy as a tool for reading the present, so that it can help us avoid the political mistakes of the late empire.
Carlo Rovelli, Corriere della Sera
[A] provocative short book . . . with a novel twist.
The Economist
[A] fascinating book.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 'Best Summer Books of 2023: Economics'
A short, sober (and sobering) account of where we are now and where we might be heading ... lucid and absorbing ... jaw-dropping facts and figures.
Carlos F. Noreña, Times Literary Supplement
This essay has changed my view both of the past and the present ... It’s convincing and relevant to the west today.
Carlo Rovelli, The Observer