Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

While the rest of us spent lockdown learning to bake sourdough, Niall Ferguson applied his intellect to the task of placing the pandemic in historical context. In Doom, the Scottish-born Harvard historian sets out to understand why humanity, time and again through the ages, has failed to prepare for catastrophe.

There's no doubt that Ferguson's inquiry is dazzlingly broad, covering a host of natural and man-made disasters. He mixes Vesuvius, wars, famine, Chernobyl with a variety of disciplines. These range from network science to epidemiology. However, I found the whole thing a massively confusing, rambling mishmash. An unconvincing blend of statements of the readily apparent and laborious theorising. Was the pandemic a black swan (an unexpected event that catches humanity unawares), a grey rhino (an obviously dangerous event that people nonetheless do nothing about), or a dragon king (an event that flattens civilisation)? Ferguson says it was a grey rhino. Ok, so? And when not playing with grand concepts, he indulges in tiresome liberal-baiting. For example, Black Lives Matter was a “contagion”.

Another problem with this book is that it is already outdated. Concluding his narrative last autumn, Ferguson predicts the Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered not in the same league as the 1918 Spanish influenza, but rather the (now largely forgotten) Asian flu of 1957. A lot, however, has happened since: the second wave, the emergence of scary new variants, and the roll-out of vaccines.

I'll save you the job of wading through this. Insofar as the book has an overall thesis, it is that disasters are usually less the product of poor leadership than of vulnerabilities of the system.