“Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp. Knopf, 2025. 592 pages.”
“Kemp describes how, historically, collapse was not an isolated event but the inevitable result of unequal and exploitative societies.”
“examples of what he calls “Goliath”—“a collection of hierarchies in which some individuals dominate others to control energy and labour”—and they all collapsed because of the weaknesses inherent to such states.”
“weaknesses included inequality, extractive institutions, and oligarchical rule, all of which made these states vulnerable when they were hit by shocks like droughts or invaders.”
“Although cities burned when empires and city-states crumbled, Kemp argues that most of the population didn’t die but just left for the countryside to farm and forage.”
“Kemp’s counterintuitive ideas about how, historically, collapse actually improved many people’s lives are well argued and may be surprising to many readers. His history of the world will probably not be. It’s the story of our fall from Paleolithic grace, from egalitarian nomadic bands to sedentary living, hoarded grain, hierarchical society, male domination, and war, right up to our current ecological breakdown.”
“This story will be familiar to readers of other big-picture history books, such as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) and David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021)—and there’s some truth to it.”
“there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Paleolithic life was cooperative, egalitarian, and relatively free from war.”
“Kemp has synthesized an impressive amount of recent research in archaeology, anthropology, and other fields. Scholars will certainly debate many of his points, but broadly speaking, he defends his argument well.”
“The problem, though, is that—since, in Kemp’s own description, the fatal qualities of “Goliaths” are shared by every large society that has ever existed—it’s unclear how useful it is to identify these structural flaws.”
“if the only other option is to live in the Ice Age, this is an empty exercise.”
“The problem is that the most interesting argument Kemp has to make—that, historically, societal collapse actually benefited the majority of people—doesn’t apply to our society. The collapse of today’s “Global Goliath” would be a disaster even for the poorest.”
“although Kemp styles his book “a people’s history of collapse,” he has almost nothing to say about the history of collective struggle, revolution, and resistance to state power.”
“his thoughtful and well-argued comments in the 99 pages of endnotes make better reading than the book itself.”
“Kemp’s wealth of material is used to support an argument that could have been made in a magazine article.”
“He says flat-out that we’ve never had a civilization worthy of the name since the Old Stone Age, but he doesn’t pursue this argument. He should: it’s compelling. Bruce Chatwin wrote a very good book about exactly this. Part travelogue, part novel, part fantasy anthropology, The Songlines (1987) describes premodern nomadic life in poetic terms and suggests that we should return to it.”