Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

El libro llegó muy rápido, y bien.

I found it hard to sustain interest in this book because the style is academic and full of jargon.

It's articulate, detailed, and written in a typically English style of restraint and candour.Lots of detail, it's quite dense and heavy going at times. I've read through much of this sort of thing before, volcanic disasters, tsunamis, Chernobyl, Fukushima, the worst Air crashes, Titanic, the black death, plagues of various descriptions, covid19, Easter Island, World War 1, World War 2, the Asian Flu of 1957-58, the Challenger disaster, The Spanish Flu, aids, smallpox, vaccines, wars, famines, natural disasters, climate change, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, communist purges, millennial cults, you name it, if its a major or nearly major disaster, it's probably in here.From grey rhinos-big ugly and obvious before they arrived, to Black Swans-not easily predicted beforehand, to Dragon Kings-outsize events that don't fit on the scale, it's a very cool headed overview of disaster and doom, science, and history.In fact it's better and more detailed than most catastrophe books, with a wider range than many specialist authors can achieve in their respective fields, something the historian sometimes has an advantage over, since they don't focus on just one specialised type of disaster, such as only volcanos or only pandemics alone.Detailed analysis of covid19 of course, but some of this is already dated, with major second waves and variants yet to get underway when it was written in August -September last year 2020. But even the covid19 stuff is entertaining and enlightening, with details of origins and developments that haven't aged, only recent predictions, recent vaccines and variants are not up to date.I've read most of Ferguson's books, all of them are excellent and worth reading, and this more topical than most. He is typically English and conservative, but with an original, slightly rebellious streak that is not typically English. He references things like styles of rock music, comic books, and other things a typical academic historian might miss, such as the publication of Mad magazine and Elvis songs in the 1950s at the time of the Asian flu, or the African Ebola dance of 2014-2015, which mimicked hugging and kissing from a distance. It's a nice cultural touch that is often part of the reason his books are so popular. Not every historian is in touch with such everyday 'smelling of the roses'. My favourite historian author for 'big picture' overviews.

I loved this book and have ordered several more for friends and family. It’s such an interesting topic that isn’t discussed enough and this book provided much needed insights. Love love love

Not an easy read, topic wise and prose wise. But interesting.