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Why Empires Fall

Rome, America and the Future of the West

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Why Empires Fall

Written by: John Rapley, Peter Heather
Narrated by: Sid Sagar
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Brought to you by Penguin.

Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in freefall.

This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence. In Why Empires Fall, historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley use this Roman past to think anew about the contemporary West, its state of crisis, and what paths we could take out of it.

In this exceptional, transformative intervention, Heather and Rapley explore the uncanny parallels - and productive differences - between the two cases, moving beyond the familiar tropes of invading barbarians and civilizational decay to learn new lessons from ancient history. From 399 to 1999, the life cycles of empires, they argue, sow the seeds of their inevitable destruction. The era of the West has reached its own end - so what comes next?

©2023 John Rapley and Peter Heather (P)2023 Penguin Audio 20th Century Americas Ancient Civilisation Modern Rome United States World
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Critic Reviews

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)
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The wind is changing, and the book makes sure you hear the howling. If the West doesn’t adapt, it won’t be the fall of Rome all over again, it’ll be the fall of Rome without the cool architecture, just PowerPoint slides and IMF debt spreadsheets.

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