How Worlds Collapse: What History, Systems, and Complexity Can Teach Us about Our Modern World and Fragile Future

As our society confronts the impacts of globalization and global systemic risks―such as financial contagion, climate change, and epidemics―what can studies of the past tell us about our present and future? How Worlds Collapse offers case studies of societies that either collapsed or overcame cataclysmic adversity. The authors in this volume find commonalities between past civilizations and our current society, tracing patterns, strategies, and early warning signs that can inform decision-making today. While today’s world presents unique challenges, many mechanisms, dynamics, and fundamental challenges to the foundations of civilization have been consistent throughout history―highlighting essential lessons for the future.

Miguel A. Centeno is Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and Executive Vice Dean of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He is founder and co-director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) Global Systemic Risk research community.

Peter W. Callahan is a graduate of Princeton University who earned his MS in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of New Mexico. He is a researcher at Princeton’s PIIRS Global Systemic Risk research community where his scholarly interests include the study of socio-ecological systems, historical systemic risks, sustainable development, and renewable energy policy and technology.

Paul A. Larcey is co-director of the PIIRS Global Systemic Risk research community at Princeton University. Larcey’s work with the UK’s innovation agency focuses on key emerging technologies including life sciences, quantum technologies, and AI. He has worked in corporate research, venture capital, and global industrial sectors at board and senior levels and studied engineering, materials science, and finance at London, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities.

Thayer S. Patterson is coordinator and a founding member of the PIIRS Global Systemic Risk research community at Princeton University. Following his studies in economics and mechanical engineering at Yale, and finance at Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance, his research has focused on the causes and consequences of catastrophic systemic risk.