Paul Cooper.
Fall of Civilisations: stories of greatness and decline.
Duckworth. 2024
The world is full of ruins.
From the Colosseum of Rome to the crumbling suburbs of Detroit,
the vine-wreathed temples of the Maya to the shell-pocked buildings Bakhmut and Gaza.
Each of these ruins has a different history, but all of them are places
where, one day, the future ended.
In Fall of Civilizations, historian Paul Cooper tells the human stories behind our greatest civilizations, how they rose to power and what life was like for the people who witnessed their downfall. Based on the critically acclaimed podcast, this extraordinary book turns a clear eve on to humanity’s past mistakes and whether we are doomed to repeat them.