Why Empires Fall

Rome, America and the Future of the West

Peter Heather, John Rapley

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English

Allen Lane
04 September 2023

History; General & world history; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; History of ideas; Political economy

Why did Rome fall - and what can it teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist 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?

By: Peter Heather, John Rapley
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 144mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 331g
ISBN: 9780241407493
ISBN 10: 0241407494
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 04 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies. His books include Understanding Development, which remains in widespread use as a textbook in development studies, Globalization and Inequality and most recently Twilight of the Money Gods- Economics as a Religion and How it all Went Wrong. Peter Heather is Chair of Medieval History at King's College, London. His many books include The Fall of the Roman Empire, Empires and Barbarians- Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe, The Restoration of Rome, Rome Resurgent and, most recently, Christendom.

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

A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work. -- Linda Colley * Financial Times * If we are not careful, the authors say, we could implode as fast as Rome did. The book is a useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather's scholarship shines through its pages ... an interesting polemic. -- Simon Heffer * Daily Telegraph * Two experienced scholars lucidly engage in contemporary debates about the future of the West and its parallels to the Roman Empire. This is comparative history done right. -- David Potter, author of DISRUPTION: WHY THINGS CHANGE