Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West

Rapley, John

ISBN 10: 014199116X / ISBN 13: 9780141991160

Published by Penguin Books Ltd, 2024

About this Item

Gut/Very good: Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit wenigen Gebrauchsspuren an Einband, Schutzumschlag oder Seiten. / Describes a book or dust jacket that does show some signs of wear on either the binding, dust jacket or pages.

Seller Inventory # M0014199116X-V

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014199116X
• ISBN 13: 9780141991160
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very good

About this title

Synopsis

What can the fall of Rome teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist, both experts in their field, investigate

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 rapid decline.

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 western global domination has reached its end - so what comes next?