The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

Moi ulubiony rozdział był o bombach atomowych, ale poza tym, reszta treści była na bardzo podstawowym poziomie

Unlike many of the other reviewers here, I have actually listened to the podcast. I’ve been a fan of Hardcore History and Dan Carlin’s unique and chatty approach to the subject for years. I’ve noticed that every chapter in this book is essentially a reworked past episode of the podcast. I’m not complaining. Stringing them together into a book with a common theme is brilliant. A number of the other episodes that weren’t covered in this book, the epically long ones, would also make great books.<br /><br />It was fun to go back and revisit these topics. Hardcore History is the most entertaining and thought-provoking podcast on the Internet, in my opinion. My only complaint here is that by reworking the episodes into print form and then reading them back in the audiobook, (I’m an Audible fan) these accounts lose something when compared to the podcast. I’m glad to have it all packaged together like this in one place, but I’m also glad I listened to the podcast. At least with the audiobook, we get Dan Carlin’s voice and inflection. I can only imagine that it might lose even more in the text format. To those of you who read the text version and didn’t much care for it, try listening to an episode of the podcast and see if you feel the same way. If you’re the sort to turn up your nose at the audio format altogether, there’s nothing I can do for you.<br /><br />All in all, this is an interesting take on the cycles of history and how we never seem to get away from doomsday just around the corner. This book takes you into the extremes of human experience in a way that few other history books ever do. It also explores the choices we’ve made as a species and how they looked from the point of view of the decision-makers. Unlike most professional historians (The author is not one), Dan Carlin freely speculates about the thought processes of these people without being encumbered by the need for academic rigor. If you bear that in mind, I don’t think it’s a problem. This is as much about thinking about history as it is about chronicling it.<br /><br />Whether you’re a fan of the podcast or not, this book is well worth your time.

In an effort to revitalize certain reviews that have languished far too long in algorithmic obscurity, I have gone back and grafted unto them, appendages of ghastly proportions, serving no real function other than to push against character limits like an impacted wisdom tooth. I do so primarily out of spite. With the image of every avuncular professor of letters who milked the teet of their hepatic duct with their thumb and forefinger, (while maintaining right angles with their digitus minimus manus), in order to produce bile which, with alarming ubiquity, dawns the gross morphology of a sensible notion, and attempted to piss this physiological aqueous solution consisting of salts, phospholipids, cholesterol, conjugated bilirubin, electrolytes, and water into the nerve endings of my audio equipment while verbally masquerading as, <br /><br />“Young lady. The puerile manner of your craft entertains infrequently, edifies less, and touches upon shared human experience none. Your locutions are grotesquely muscular. What we have here is the kind of clinical insecurity which results in bodybuilders injecting themselves with synthol. This is a bicep gratuitously inflated with sarcoplasmic growth and exogenous compounds. You remind me of those young men who are so obsessed with hiding their natural paunch that they bind themselves in corsets of Saran Wrap and engage in the postural affectations of a gorilla attempting burlesque. *and here he leans in conspiratorially to whisper with emphasis* let me tell you - Jen - no one gives a FIG about your ludicrous gun show. Similarly, you’re annoying those of us who love language.” And I reply to him then, as I reply to you now. Mounting the ramparts of his desk and shouting, “I CANNOT BE CAGED! I CANNOT BE CONTROLLED! before tipping sideways and kicking the desk out from under me like a suicide bucket, and in a massive contortion of physical laws, shattering my iliac crest into untold multitudes of calcified arrowheads, while the whiplash of my spine disarticulating against the ground launches my feet skyward with such violence that my shoe slides frictionless from my foot at the apogee of centripetal trajectories necessary to blast a hole through a fiberglass partition manufactured by Armstrong Ceiling Solutions and get sucked into an intake fan within the bowels of the faculty bathroom, causing it to screech and emit black smoke. Which did indeed end the tenure of this crotchety sage by causing the fatally congested turbine to then explode and push the boundaries of his delicate sensory envelope well over the edge, thus sending him into the briny depths of cardiac arrest with the sounds of mechanical failure filling his ears and tenebrous smoke cradling his dying body like an otherworldly gurney. And all the while I writhe on the ground, screaming, “MY FUCKING ILIAC CRESSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTT!<br /><br />Later, while finding myself in the unenviable position of eulogizing a grammarian inquisitor who I had essentially murdered with my penchant for exploring the limits of representation within realms verbal, it is with some shame that I tell you I could not help but take a jab at the turkey necked bastard by ending my heartfelt poem with the following words: “Concision is weakness. Verbosity is strength. Amen.” Causing his bereaved widow to storm the pulpit in asthmatic fury before being handily restrained by a pair of cherubic gingers who cast silent aspersions my way as they led the hysterical woman into fresh air. Ah the folly of youth.<br /><br />I'll never forget the day this book came into my life. As I took a nasty header, (and not for the fuuuuuuuuu (or(or(or(or(or(or(or(or(I am who(or(I(or(is explained by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj as an abstraction in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman: it is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories.) am)’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye) אֶהְיֶה)fifth)fourth)third)second)first)time) down a grimy vestibule outside makeshift lodgings constructed from the partially digested remains of shrews struck dead by lift and drag coefficients attached to remarkably big peepers (ie. a nocturnal predator without equal by the name of Doctor Hoo) terminating in great, rodent rending claws of volcanic glass which it uses to administer a fatal “Good game!” To the scurrying Mus musculus’s furry, rapidly undulating posterior as it tries to get the fuck out of the proverbial Dodge (ie. An allusion to Dodge City, Kansas, a busy cattle town in the late 19th century notorious for gunfighters, gambling, brothels and saloons which one must scram from forthwith least they incur truncations to their fiscal and/or life expectancies), reaggravating previous traumas inflicted on, (but not limited to), my iliac crest and exploding a parcel of packing peanuts with the hard kernel of a bōc (ie. bōk) (ie. Cognate to ‘beech’) (ie. буква bukva) (ie. Codex) buried within. I then lay immobile for days, scorched by the sun and weathering the insults of inclement weather while wondering whether [insert display of contrition and total disavowal of frivolous verbal synthol] (ie. Re-enunciation (sp)) my entire pelvic girdle had sustained damages irreparable. At long last I slid between these pages for succor, only to discover a collection of vulnerabilities in our most social of fabrics.<br /><br />Are you someone who is concerned that, due to your sheltered upbringing, you’ve inherited an optimism bias which makes it difficult to conceive of bad things happening to you? Do you feel as if this extends more broadly to the idea that people in affluent parts of the world have lost the tragic sense of history? That, for them, history is something to read about, but never live through? This book may just blast you in the chest with the force of a frozen turkey fired from a howitzer. Have you ever, while smeared temporally and spatially by the ingestion of DMT, heard frantic voices rise in a parabolic arc and whistle down on you with a deadly warning? To which you stopped and shouted: “It’s NOT paranoia! The embedding is very subtle, it’s probably been overlooked!” Only to realize, much too late, that you’d blundered into an open field used for turkey launching competitions? Well, you might’ve lived through the national Punkin Chunkin event, but a cold brick of snood and concentrated tryptophan makes for far deadlier ordnance. See you on the other side, sister.<br /><br />This book is by Dan Carlin, who, while not carrying the official talisman of a historian, has a knack for sharing his passion for the subject on the Hardcore History Podcast. If you have a thing for history, and you haven’t confessed your feelings for it yet, take your sorry ass and get on it before I slap knots on your head faster than you can rub ‘em. If you’re already a loyal concubine, you will find that this book is basically a compressed version of prior episodes, massaged into a thematically connected reflection on the collapse of empires, and the cyclic historical forces which lurk below the untroubled surface of our conditioned complacency like the narcoleptic Old One himself. Carlin’s perspective on history is that of a Xenomorph, with it’s prehensile tale ending in a barbed spear and ever eager to penetrate the soft guts of your local android and cause it to leak suspiciously coom-like fluid from every USB-Z port (lets all pour out a used condom for our boy Bishop - those who know - know well the gruesome fate the master of Five Finger Fillet met at the end of the Queen’s girthy stinger).<br /> <br />Alternatively, and by his own admission, he adopts the perspective of a Martian (far less interesting if you ask me, but, whatever), or what others might refer to as Big History, meaning he parses the interminable interactions of beans most human in chronological heapings foreign to your average historian and portion control enthusiast. Through this lens, progress which we take to be inevitable and immovable, appears precarious. Patterns of collective behavior emerge which render this optimism quaint. This complacency, arrogant. The arc of history, on these timescales, does not bend so much as present the teeth of advancement and regression. <br /><br />Carlin captures this phenomena by noting: we are hardwired to “Think in terms of continuous improvement and modernization because it broadly reflects how things have been for many centuries.” But then presents the question: “The advent of nuclear weapons has bestowed on humans the capability to reorient the world (or destroy it) in mere minutes, either with direct intended strikes on enemies or with a miscalculation of a rival’s maneuvers. Has our capacity to be citizens of the world and possess these weapons responsibly grown with our increased technology? Or are we the same creatures on a collision course with disaster, once again the victims of our own hubris? On the precarious nature of a world littered with nuclear weapons, Carlin lets his pessimism show by quoting the philosopher Bertrand Russell – “you may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.”<br /><br />Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.<br /><br />The Bronze Age, the Assyrians, the Romans, and Atlantis all receive some treatment, though the chapter on Rome receives special, if general, attention, while Atlantis is nowhere to be found. We’re left to infer its presence from its absence. We’re then given a brief reprieve from this ruinous rumination, as our spirits are made to soar on the wings of the Spanish Flu, and experience the panoramic grandeur of the Black Plague, before finally allowing the twin angels of biological warfare and nuclear annihilation to sing us to our rest.<br /><br />We in parts of the developed world have experienced an unprecedented level of peace and prosperity. Most of the time we’re oblivious to the fact that the sum of all sword swings, shot arrows, calvary charges, grapeshots, blunderbusses, muskets, canons, artillery and spitballs, have had their collective energy amplified by unspeakable orders of magnitude, packaged for delivery, and equipped with amazon alpha-prime. The kinetic has become potential. Lucky for us that our wisdom has increased at a rate commensurate with our technological progress. And that our highly capable, global leaders, have only our best interests in mind.<br /><br />Fucking iliac crest lol.<br />

A hundred years ago, humankind went through one of the worst phases in their history. A world war, a global pandemic and then another world war. We survived. After that, a lot of measures were put into place to ensure we don’t have to go through such devastation again. World War 3 is something we dread whenever the slightest international diplomacy failure happens. And it has worked, to an extent. We haven’t had to face a World War again. However, we haven’t been as vigilant about Global Pandemics. And today, we seem to be in the grip of something as dangerous as any – COVID -19. The Spanish Flu though overshadowed by the World Wars, was perhaps as big a disaster as either of the wars. We need to mobilize our nations today, as we would for a major war. Bill Gates had made a global call for this back in 2015.<br /><br />We did not heed it. Today, we go to work and talk about deadlines and other stuff as if a global war is not waging on humanity. We need to take severe war-like action today. Before it is too late.<br /><br />Perhaps it would be a good time to look back on the 100-year-old pandemic that almost sunk us. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse rode together a hundred years ago, and it would serve us well to remember that the horsemen always meet each other and reap together, even if one might arrive before others occasionally.<br /><br />In 1918, during a century just like ours, in which the most modern of societies thought such epidemics were a thing of the past, people got a reminder that even seemingly routine illnesses can be potentially civilization threatening under the right conditions. A malady that would be dubbed the Spanish Flu struck while the devastating First World War was raging, and soon its death toll greatly surpassed that of the war’s.<br /><br />Perhaps one of the most astonishing things about this flu was that at the time it hit, humanity had made great strides in medicine. But when American service personnel started showing symptoms, the experts were stumped. The author John Barry describes in The Great Influenza how sailors mysteriously began bleeding from their noses and ears, while others coughed blood. “Some coughed so hard the autopsies would later show they had torn apart abdominal muscles and rib cartilage,” Barry writes. Many were delirious or complained of severe headaches “as if someone were hammering a wedge into their skulls just behind the eyes” or “body aches so intense they felt like bones breaking.” Some of the men’s skin turned strange colors, from “just a tinge of blue around their lips or fingertips” to skin “so dark one could not tell easily if they were Caucasian or Negro.”<br /><br />A couple of months before the appearance of these extraordinary symptoms, autopsies of crewmen from a British ship who had died after experiencing similar trials showed “their lungs had resembled those of men who had died from poison gas or pneumonic plague.”<br /><br />More alarming was the speed and scope of the spreading, Barry writes, despite efforts to isolate and contain those who hadn’t even shown symptoms but had merely been exposed: “Four days after that Boston detachment arrived, nineteen sailors in Philadelphia were hospitalized. . . . Despite their immediate isolation and that of everyone with whom they had had contact, eighty-seven sailors were hospitalized the next day . . . two days later, six hundred more were hospitalized with this strange disease. The hospital ran out of empty beds, and hospital staff began falling ill.” As the sick overwhelmed the facility, officials began sending new patients to civilian hospitals, while military personnel continued moving among bases around the country, exposing ever more people.<br /><br />What began in Philadelphia—at least in its most dangerous form—quickly advanced. In his new book, The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin writes, there was still an international war on, and modern transportation had made great strides, so the virus could get from place to place at a far greater pace than any previous pandemic could. The collision of this outbreak with this first period of true globalization was devastating. At its height, whole cities in the United States were virtually shut down, as areas, where human beings congregated, were closed to prevent people from transmitting the illness. People stayed home from school and work rather than risk exposure, and the gears of society in some places seemed imperiled by the justifiable fear of getting sick. By the time it receded in 1920, modern epidemiologists estimate that the flu had killed somewhere between fifty and one hundred million people; “roughly half of those who died were young men and women in the prime of their life, in their twenties and thirties,” Barry writes. “If the upper estimate of the death toll is true, as many as 8 to 10 percent of young adults then living may have been killed by the virus.”<br /><br />The disease wasn’t just remarkable for the number of its victims, but also for the compressed nature of its devastating labors. Although it took two years to come and go, “perhaps two-thirds of the deaths occurred in a period of twenty-four weeks, and more than half of those deaths occurred in even less time, from mid-September to early December 1918.” That amount of damage in that short a period of time is disorienting and potentially destabilizing for a society.<br /><br />All this happened in an age when we understood a lot about biomedicine. We understood that germs spread disease; we understood how you prevented contact to limit exposure. Indeed, doctors quickly figured out that what was killing sailors in Philadelphia was a strain of influenza, but it was unlike any they had seen before, and nothing they did could contain it. As much as a fifth of the entire population of the planet contracted it, and as much as 5 percent died from it. In sheer numbers, it was the deadliest pandemic to hit humankind, but as a percentage of the human population alive at the time, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the Black Death that hit western Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. So, humankind didn’t exactly dodge a bullet—the damage was severe and widespread—but it could have been much, much worse.<br /><br />It still can be, Dan Carlin assures us, in a book that talks about enough civilizational collapses to give one ennui. And as an aside, it should be mentioned that this book would add almost nothing of note to a regular of the podcasts - Carlin just elaborates on themes he explores in great detail in the podcasts as well. The same sense of hubris affects us today as affected the generation that was blindsided by the Spanish Influenza. It’s hard to imagine a human society acting rationally or humanely if mortality levels began reaching catastrophic levels, Dan Carlin says. In the past, societies have been reshaped and at times have nearly crumbled under the weight of a pandemic. It’s possible that, facing mortality rates of 50, 60, or 70 percent—as people who lived through the Black Death did—we might do as they did: turn to religion, change the social structure, blame unpopular minorities and groups, or abandon previous belief systems. We can learn from how people in other eras responded to a catastrophic situation, and we can ask ourselves: With all our modern technology and science and medical knowledge, how do we respond?<br /><br />What’s the likelihood that humanity has already experienced the worst plague it will ever encounter? In the famous science fiction classic The War of the Worlds, author H. G. Wells has the alien would-be conquerors defeated ultimately by Earth’s pathogens. Let’s hope those same planetary defense mechanisms don’t get us first. Those who regularly work with infectious diseases and see the Black Death–like damage that something like Ebola or Marburg virus can have on a small scale in isolated communities are all too aware of how a hemorrhagic fever virus in one global region, or an avian flu mutation somewhere else, could remind us that, just like the Titanic, our civilization is not unsinkable.

Well that was underwhelming. If you have listened to his podcasts prepare to hear everything you’ve already heard before; Dan doesn’t try at all to come up with any new stories, questions, or ways of explaining the same stories from history. (Hint: Planet of the Apes reference Incoming) This book does not cover new territory but feels like he just looked through his old research notes and put them all together. <br />but I believe the book should be rated aside from connection to his podcast. I was expecting him choosing to write a book means he would dive more intensely into a certain subject, citing deeper sources, having some overarching point to choose to write a book, but there was none to me. He presents the downfall of nations of the past in his classic dramatic narratives, and while it was fascinating, it felt very pointless. His historical stories were interesting but very surface level, entertaining but not much else; As he goes from story to story I wonder what is the point of any of this? He ties it all together by asking “What if that happened to us?” But the loose connection between it all feels like I learned nothing of any value when I finished. I leave the book with no more knowledge or questions answered, or questions to ask even. Just random history stories told in dramatic fashion and some fun considerations of WhAt IF?!’s. <br /><br />For those looking for solid history, you will be disappointed; for those wanting some rather simple historical entertainment , you might enjoy this.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. <br /><br />Based on a podcast, this is an interesting jump into the world of history, but not quite as we known it. Dan Carlin examines some of the disasters of our history to determine their likelihood of ever happening again, as well as how they occurred in the first place. It’s grand scale history, sweeping us through the ages and inviting the reader to think about the what ifs and near misses of our pasts. <br /><br />At times I found the subject matter a little dry and heavy going, requiring a bit more thought and concentration than I originally intended. Several times I had to put it down and leave it for a while so that I could appreciate and digest what I’d just read as I felt it didn’t really ‘flow’ well. I also thought that at times it was a little too broad, trying to tackle too much without any great depth of content. The subject matter also isn’t really that memorable. <br /><br />Ok for what it is, and provides a good soundboard for the reader to seek out further information.

I have never listened to the podcast that this book is based on, but found it incredibly thought-provoking. At it's heart it's a philosophical take on history looking at how famine, plague, war and other calamities come about, what there effects were and then asking the question of could they happen again? Is our civilisation genuinely different from the Assyrians or Romans who didn't think that their empires could fall either? <br /><br />In a weird way, I think this book is akin to <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/23692271.Sapiens_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind" title="Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari" rel="noopener">Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind</a> in its explicit approach of "historical-themes-as-a-philosophical-way-of-examining-society-today". Whilst Harari writes with a "certainty", creating one gigantic narrative sweep of history and a prediction for where we are headed, this book is more about raising questions for the reader to think through and finding nuance. <br /><br />It has a similarly grand ambition to Sapiens (in this case to look at whether the apocalypse is coming), but rather than 1 narrative it does so through 6 or so discrete prisms (eg history of disease, history of war, history of childhood) that zoom in on a relevant example from history - Bronze Age collapse, Cuban Missile Crisis, Black Death plagues etc... I've come away from it with some new insights and a lot to process.

Ukratko reći o čemu se u ovoj knjizi radi je dosta nezahvalan zadatak. Nije ovo još jedna obična priča o napretku čovječanstva kroz povijest. Ovdje će se propitkivati razni događaji, a odgovore na pitanja ćete si najčešće morati sami dati. Činjenice su tu, no kako ćete vi reagirati na pandemije, atomsku bombu , ratove i sl., potražite između ovih korica i razmislite o svemu kao pojedinac. <br /><br />Cijeli osvrt pronađite ovdje: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://knjige-u-svom-filmu.webador.com/recenzije-stranih-knjiga/697886_recenzija-knjige-kraj-je-uvijek-blizu">https://knjige-u-svom-filmu.webador.c...</a>

This is a book about systems. Carlin tells stories from across history about civilizations, and how a set of choices can affect a civilization in unintended ways.<br /><br />These stories aren’t all exactly connected to each other, except that they are all under the theme of civilizations as a system. This is kind of like a Malcolm Gladwell book, except Gladwell tells stories to try and prove a point. Carlin isn’t interested in proving a point, or explaining a definitive answer to a question. Carlin just likes the questions.<br /><br />And he’s a great presenter of history - I learned a lot and it made me think about things in ways I hadn’t before, so I’m giving this five stars.<br /><br />The best part of the book for me was the next to last (and longest) chapter on nuclear war, specifically the idea of preventative nuclear war. I didn’t realize there was a push between the end of WW2 and when other countries got the bomb for the US to just go ahead and attack Russia while we had the upper hand. Some of the people pushing for this were hawks, but many were avowed pacifists! The idea being that preventative annihilation of bad actors would have saved the largest number of lives.<br /><br />Lots of interesting questions with no clear answers. The open-ended nature is what makes it interesting.

The principal question for the modern age is this: Has humanity made moral progress, or are we destined to repeat the same mistakes and suffer the same misfortunes? Dan Carlin, founder of the popular podcast Hardcore History, explores this question as he recounts the apocalyptic moments of our past while asking if the modern world is destined to face similar catastrophes, and if so, whether or not we have the resolve to handle them.<br /><br />Carlin covers the Bronze Age collapse, the fall of the Assyrian and Roman empires, and the devastating physical and psychological effects of famine, plague, total war, and potential nuclear annihilation. <br /><br />This is not exactly light or uplifting reading for the holiday season, but that’s the point. Carlin is suggesting that perhaps the state of perpetual peace and stability we are seemingly living in is making us soft and vulnerable to an unexpected calamity that we are no longer tough or resilient enough to endure. We may think that our comfortable lives will go on uninterrupted indefinitely, but then again, so did the Romans, along with the Assyrians, Babylonians, and ancient Egyptians and Greeks. As Carlin asks the reader:<br /><br />“Can you imagine the city you currently live in as a desolate ruin? Will it one day be like most cities that have ever existed, or not? Either outcome seems fascinating.”<br /><br />As Carlin narrates the calamities of the past, the reader is confronted with the question of whether or not our civilization is really immune from any of these apocalyptic scenarios. We may live with advanced technology, but our proclivity for tribalism, superstition, and war is always bubbling under the surface. Might we simply be waiting for the next incurable pandemic or total war or catastrophic nuclear or ecological disaster? As Carlin wrote:<br /><br />“There have always been large wars between the great powers. Any next such war would involve nuclear-armed states. World War III sounds like a bad movie concept, but is it any more unlikely than eternal peace between the great states?”<br /><br />The idea that humanity has already faced its greatest challenges on all fronts (disease, war, natural disasters, famine, and political upheaval) seems to be very unlikely. And it is precisely this complacent frame of mind that makes any civilization most susceptible to catastrophe. As Carlin wrote, when discussing the possibility of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis:<br /><br />“Samuel Johnson is supposed to have said, ‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ For that two-week period [the Cuban Missile Crisis], when all seemed near lost, humankind treated the threat with the level of gravity it deserved. In a perfect world, we would be able to do this continuously, but history has shown that the lesser aspects and banalities of life have a way of intruding.”<br /><br />In other words, it could be the case that our underestimation of existential risks ironically makes them much more likely to occur. <br /><br />On the other hand, and despite all of this, there is some cause for optimism. We certainly know more today about the containment of infectious disease, for example, and we also know that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other. As long as our medical and political science stay one step ahead—and constant vigilance is maintained—we may in fact be able to avert the next deadly pandemic or total war. <br /><br />More importantly, there is an argument to be made that we have also made some moral progress, having grown increasingly averse to war and violence. As Carlin pointed out, after the end of the Second World War, the United States was the only country in the world to possess nuclear weapons. Yet despite the urgings of several American military leaders to attack the Soviet Union, the US did not initiate a nuclear attack on its primary global competitor when it had the opportunity to do so.<br /><br />As Carlin wrote:<br /><br />“What would Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great—or Hitler, for that matter—have done with a monopoly on nuclear weapons? Not use them? If you gave the great Carthaginian general Hannibal nuclear weapons in his life-or-death struggle with the Roman Republic, handed him the button, and said, ‘If you push this, all of Rome will be devastated,’ does he push it, or does he say, ‘Maybe I should think about this?’”<br /><br />Whether or not you think the US was justified in dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end the war (perhaps saving more lives in the process), its decision to not use them on the Soviet Union when they had a nuclear monopoly can be considered progress of a kind. <br /><br />To Carlin’s credit, he prefers to ask the questions rather than answer them. By his own admission, he is a fan and popularizer of history, not a historian. His strengths lie in his ability as a master storyteller and clever inquirer, which are on full display in this book. But it is the reader who is ultimately left to decide whether or not the future will resemble the past. <br /><br />Carlin leaves the reader to contemplate several questions, the most critical of which may be whether we should de-modernize the world to prevent environmental disaster or whether the very societies that create the greatest ecological and military risk are the most likely to, for example, cure the next pandemic or divert an incoming asteroid. In the end, the question is whether or not we will use our technology for good or evil, or whether we are up against so many threats that, sooner or later, one or the other will lead to civilizational collapse. Since no one can foresee the future, these are not easy questions to answer. <br /><br />In closing, I’ll point out that there is a more cynical interpretation of the book that would consider it to be a series of loosely connected essays regurgitated from the podcast. Since Carlin is not advancing any original thesis, it’s possible that a fan of the podcast would already be familiar with much of the content. Not being very familiar with the podcast myself, I can’t really say. But without that knowledge, I can easily recommend the book on its own merits as a fascinating narration of our more gruesome past and as an important philosophical exploration of humanity’s future. <br />