Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse

by Luke Kemp

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

As society advances further with constant discoveries, where do we go from here? Luke Kemp dives into the inevitable in this eye-opening exploration of what causes a major societal collapse and how to progress through it.

A vast and unprecedented survey of societal collapse—stretching from the Bronze Age to the age of silicon—that digs through the ruins of fallen societies to understand the root causes of their downfall and the most dire consequences for our future

Stepping back to look at our precariously interdependent global society of today—with the threat of nuclear war ever present and the world heating up faster than it did before the Great Permian Extinction, which wiped away 80–90 percent of life on Earth—one couldn’t be blamed for asking: Will we make it?
    Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy that stretches across five millennia, and more than 440 societal lifespans, from the first Egyptian dynasty to the modern-day United Kingdom, using the latest discoveries from archaeology and anthropology to reveal profound and often counterintuitive insights into why exactly societies fail.
While books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse zoom in on only a few case studies, Kemp’s embrace of a “deep systems” approach, availing himself of the largest dataset possible, allows him to discover the broader trends, and deeper causes, of collapse that pose future risks—without abandoning the gripping historical narratives that bring these pages alive.
    Goliath’s Curse is a stark reminder that there are both bright and dark sides to societal collapse—that it is not necessarily a reversion to chaos or a dark age—and that making a more resilient world may well mean making a more just one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593321362
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/23/2025
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	592

About the Author

LUKE KEMP is a senior research associate at the Notre Dame Institute of Advanced Study, and a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) and Darwin College at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on understanding the deep history and future of extreme global risks. Kemp has advised the World Health Organization and multiple international institutions, and his work has been covered by media outlets such as the BBC, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.

Editorial Reviews

Citing Hobbes’s Delusion, Goliath’s Curse, and cobalt miners in the Congo, renowned existential risk specialist Luke Kemp looks both back into history and forward into the future, spelling out the dangers that we currently face and suggesting ways in which we might avoid the pitfalls leading to collapse, before our luck runs out. This is a brilliant and insightful book, guaranteed to keep you thinking during the day and wide awake with worry during the night.” —Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C. and After 1177 B.C.

"A deeply sobering and strangely inspiring history of how societies collapse—and how we can still save ours. Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins." —Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus

"Anyone who doubts the importance of this conversation hasn't been paying attention—the spectacle of the world's richest man seizing chaotic control of the world's most powerful nation underscores the author's points about the corrosive effects of grotesque inequity. It's clearly past time that we figured out how to build down the scale of our societies, in interesting but urgent ways." —Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes The Sun

“Absolutely essential reading for understanding why past civilizations collapsed,
and how to protect our own from the same fate.” —Lewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge

“A fascinating intellectual journey . . . This is a book that should be read—and a message that should be heeded—by anyone interested in achieving lasting human prosperity while preserving our planet.” —Professor Jim Bacchus, former Congressman, founding judge of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and author of Democracy for a Sustainable World

"A comprehensive overview of societal collapse, based on the analysis of dozens of cases spanning thousands of years from the Paleolithic to today. Highly recommended." —Peter Turchin, author of End Times

“A profound and mind-expanding book that challenges the existing narratives of societal collapse. Through a long-term lens, Kemp asks us to reconsider histories we thought we knew, a present we take for granted, and future perils we have yet to meet. This is a chillingly enlightening read that will reorient your understanding of the world and how it came to be.” —Richard Fisher, author of The Long View and senior editor at Aeon

“This is the book on societal collapse that I had always hoped someone would write. It was worth the wait!” —Walter Scheidel, author of The Great Leveler

"A great book. The history and plausible futures of collapse are set forth with incredible clarity and rigour. The worst outcome is—we hope—probably preventable if we are perceptive enough as a species, and plan enough to persevere against the stupidity and arrogance of the plutocrats in our midst." —Danny Dorling, author of The Next Crisis

"Kemp shows that inequality breeds instability and true resilience lies in the democratisation of power. Important reading for anyone committed to a future beyond empire." —Jason Hickel, author of Less Is More

"In this wide-ranging book Luke Kemp presents a fascinating multi-millenial panorama of how societies have emerged, flourished, but eventually collapsed. He then addresses the lessons this historical record offers for safeguarding humanity’s future, in an era when unprecedented global connectedness and technological advance could engulf our entire civilisation in a terminal catastrophe." —Martin J. Rees, Astronomer Royal and author of Our Final Hour

"Luke Kemp is a writer and thinker of great talent and probity, and Goliath’s Curse is an important, clarifying, and most of all timely contribution to our age of anxiety." —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, staff writer at the New Yorker

"With a breathtaking sweep of history, Luke Kemp decodes the operating system of power and its recurring fatal error: the belief that dominance equals resilience. Goliath's Curse reveals how, from the first empires to our digital age, the concentration of power has always been a precursor to collapse. By showing that our most enduring social structures are built not on command, but on collaboration, Kemp offers a profound argument for the power of plurality. An essential read for anyone building the more open, fair, and antifragile world we urgently need." —Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Cyber Ambassador and founding Minister of Digital Affairs

"Erudite, detailed and urgent. A masterpiece of data-driven collapsology." —Paul Cooper, author of Fall of Civilizations

"A brilliant, utterly convincing account of the evolution of human society and why we are probably reaching humanity's end days." —Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm

"A page-turning masterpiece and a necessary antidote to our age of crisis. If you like Jared Diamond you'll love Goliath's Curse. Compelling and profound." —Roman Krznaric, author of History for Tomorrow and The Good Ancestor

"Goliath’s Curse is both a sweeping history and a forensic diagnosis of the systems that rule us and how they fall apart. This isn’t just about the past; it’s about the trajectory we’re on now. This book offers the clarity we desperately need in an overloaded, accelerating world." —Nate Hagens, host of The Great Simplification

"An invigorating look at big picture history across continents and millennia, and a survival manual to boot." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[A] brilliant and unnerving debut. . . . Pointing to modern elites’ failure to address climate change, Kemp offers a Cassandra-like warning about the path today’s oligarchs have set. It adds up to a sweeping and dire vision of a world on the brink.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The lessons [Kemp] has drawn are often striking." —Damian Carrington, The Guardian

From the Publisher

★ 2025-06-13
Giants are usually hard to fell—but when they fall, they fall hard.

“The average lifespan of a state is 326 years,” writes international relations scholar Kemp. “The largest states…are more fragile, lasting on average just 155 years.” What Kemp calls “Goliath states,” including Russia, China, and the U.S., “can be surprisingly fragile,” even though underlying all of them is the threat of violence via police, army, and other government agencies. In some instances, Kemp observes, the collapse of a state is a good thing: Somalia was better off without its dictatorship, even as warlords contended for power. Often, collapse is incremental, so that a peasant in the Italian countryside might not have been aware that the Roman Empire was falling apart. But just as often, collapse is cataclysmic, as Kemp fears it might be given multiple converging threats, including climate change, inequality, the rise of AI, and nuclear war. Societal collapse may then ensue, but, as Kemp notes, that is largely “about the fall of great power structures,” with elites standing the most to lose. Much of Kemp’s book is about the evolution of the state, revisiting anthropological views of Paleolithic societies as happier and more egalitarian than modern ones; archaeological evidence, he notes, suggests that moderns are about twice as likely to die violently than people 10,000 years ago. As humans acquired “lootable resources” unknown to their forebears, motivations for impersonal violence increased. Kemp’s book is wide ranging and full of useful and provocative theses, such as this one: “The more strongly states subjugate women, the more likely they are to be both autocratic and prone to failure.” Just so is his set of prescriptions for nations and people to survive the possibility of a catastrophic downfall: for states, for instance, the mandate to “make the world equal again”; for individuals, “Don’t be a dick.”

An invigorating look at big picture history across continents and millennia, and a survival manual to boot.

Kirkus Reviews