Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Complete And Well Documented Examination of Disaster. This is a book that looks not just at one disaster or one type of disaster, but at all of them. It doesn't look to one threat or another threat or a third threat, but moves between types of threats and shows how they, really, are all interrelated by a common element: the human, and in particular the governmental, response to them. From ancient plagues and volcanoes to hot-off-the-press (at the time of writing a few months prior to even my own seeming first public review level early read) details of the current global catastrophes. While docking a star for Ferguson's high praise of John Maynard Keynes (suffice it to say I tend to hold economists such as Hayak, Bastiat, and Von Mises to levels Ferguson holds Keynes), that isn't really my style since those are more a couple of aside level comments randomly in this near 500 page volume. But also, don't let the near 500 page count deter you - in my copy, 48% of that text (or nearly 200 pages) was bibliography, making this one of the more well documented books I've read in the last few years. Truly a book that needs to be considered by at minimum policy makers but really the public at large, at times it doesn't really go far enough to point out that voluntary community based disaster preparedness can often do more good than government top down approaches (even as he continually points out that the failures most often happen at middle management levels). Very much recommended.