![]() ![]() ![]() On June 17th, the Manhattan Institute hosted a virtual book talk with Niall Ferguson and City Journal editor Brian C. A compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from the most brilliant British historian of his generation. Investigating the common features of geological, geopolitical, biological, and technological disasters, Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, offers a general theory of catastrophes and explains why our responses to them so often falter. A compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from the most brilliant British historian of his. His near namesake, Neil Ferguson, had predicted lockdown would keep the UK death toll to under 6,700: it was not to be. ![]() Early attempts to prove their success on limiting the spread of the virus, he says, have ‘evaporated on closer scrutiny’. Niall Ferguson’s new book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, offers a corrective, arguing that we must understand past calamities to put today’s into proper perspective. Ferguson’s verdict about the history of lockdowns is brutal. While 2020 was an uncommon year, the tendency to think that our time has no historical analogue is a common error-one that can have serious consequences if it causes us to ignore the lessons of the past. As a deadly pandemic and civil unrest swept across the world last year, “unprecedented” became the word of the hour. ![]()
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