LEADER 00000cam a2200505 i 4500 
001    on1197724463 
003    OCoLC 
005    20210511021717.0 
008    201027s2021    nyuab    b    001 0 eng   
010      2020043578 
019    1246544120 
020    9780593297377|q(hardcover) 
020    0593297377|q(hardcover) 
020    |z9780593297384|q(ebook) 
035    (OCoLC)1197724463|z(OCoLC)1246544120 
040    DLC|beng|erda|cDLC|dOCLCO|dTOH|dOCLCF|dFMG|dCLE|dLMJ|dOJ4 
042    pcc 
049    CKEA 
050 00 RA644.C67|bF47 2021 
082 00 362.1962/414|223 
100 1  Ferguson, Niall,|eauthor. 
245 10 Doom :|bthe politics of catastrophe /|cNiall Ferguson. 
264  1 New York :|bPenguin Press,|c2021. 
300    472 pages :|billustrations, maps ;|c25 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references (pages [399]-456) and 
       index. 
505 0  Introduction -- The meaning of death -- Cycles and 
       tragedies -- Gray rhinos, black swans, and dragon kings --
       Networld -- The science delusion -- The psychology of 
       political incompetence -- From the boogie woogie flu to 
       Ebola in town -- The fractal geometry of disaster -- The 
       plagues -- The economic consequences of the plague -- The 
       three-body problem -- Future shocks. 
520    "Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical 
       perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional 
       wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was 
       solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a 
       more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their 
       very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, 
       wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally 
       distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us 
       anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes,
       we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when 
       Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black 
       Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet 
       the responses of a number of developed countries, 
       including the United States, to a new pathogen from China 
       were badly bungled. Why? The facile answer is to blame 
       poor leadership. While populist leaders have certainly 
       performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more 
       profound problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when
       we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in 
       history can we see that this was also a failure of an 
       administrative state and economic elites that had grown 
       myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so
       many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some 
       countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why 
       do appeals to "the science" often turn out to be magical 
       thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including 
       history, economics, public health, and network science, 
       Doom is a global postmortem for a plague year. In books 
       going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The 
       Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Niall 
       Ferguson has studied the pathologies that afflict modern 
       America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis 
       and online schism. Doom is the lesson of history that this
       country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to 
       learn--if we want to avoid the doom of irreversible 
       decline"--|cProvided by publisher. 
650  0 COVID-19 (Disease)|xHistory. 
650  0 COVID-19 (Disease)|xPolitical aspects. 
650  0 Epidemics|xPolitical aspects. 
650  0 Political leadership. 
650  7 MEDICAL / Public Health.|2bisacsh 
650  7 COVID-19 (Disease)|2fast|0(OCoLC)fst01984643 
650  7 COVID-19 (Disease)|xPolitical aspects.|2fast
       |0(OCoLC)fst02021838 
650  7 Epidemics|xPolitical aspects.|2fast|0(OCoLC)fst02021839 
650  7 Political leadership.|2fast|0(OCoLC)fst01069363 
655  7 History.|2fast|0(OCoLC)fst01411628 
776 08 |iOnline version:|aFerguson, Niall,|tDoom|b1st edition.
       |dNew York : Penguin Press, 2021.|z9780593297384|w(DLC)  
       2020043579 
914    FARM282299 
994    C0|bCKE