
Goliath's Curse
The History and Future of Societal Collapse
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pre-order for $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Luke Kemp
-
By:
-
Luke Kemp
About this listen
A vast and unprecedented survey of societal collapse—stretching from the Stone Age to the age of silicon—that digs through the ruins of fallen societies to understand the root causes of their downfall and the most dire consequences for our future.
"Deeply sobering and strangely inspiring . . . Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins."—Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus
"Highly recommended."—Peter Turchin, author of End Times
Stepping back to look at our precariously interdependent global society of today—with the threat of nuclear war ever present, the world getting hotter and hotter, and the rapid creation of dangerous algorithms—one couldn’t be blamed for asking: Will we make it?
Addressing this question with the seriousness it demands, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp draws on multiple historical databases and the latest discoveries from archaeology and anthropology to reveal profound and often counterintuitive insights into why societies collapse, how those living through such collapses were impacted, and what it means for us today:
- Collapse is often a good outcome for most people. After the fall of Rome people grew taller and healthier than they were under the empire.
- Our picture of past empires is skewed by the "1% view of history," relying on evidence only from the wealthiest class.
- What we call civilizations are better referred to as "Goliaths": large societies built on domination that contain the seeds of their own demise.
- Inequality has been a key driver of societies becoming more vulnerable to collapse.
- Today, collapse is likely to be far worse: it will be global, long-lasting, and severe.
Goliath’s Curse is not just a book about a few empires—it is a radical retelling of human history through collapse.
©2025 Luke Kemp (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
“Citing Hobbes’s Delusion, Goliath’s Curse, and cobalt miners in the Congo, renowned existential risk specialist Luke Kemp looks both back into history and forward into the future, spelling out the dangers that we currently face and suggesting ways in which we might avoid the pitfalls leading to collapse, before our luck runs out. This is a brilliant and insightful book, guaranteed to keep you thinking during the day and wide awake with worry during the night.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C. and After 1177 B.C.
"A deeply sobering and strangely inspiring history of how societies collapse—and how we can still save ours. Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins."—Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus
"Anyone who doubts the importance of this conversation hasn't been paying attention—the spectacle of the world's richest man seizing chaotic control of the world's most powerful nation underscores the author's points about the corrosive effects of grotesque inequity. It's clearly past time that we figured out how to build down the scale of our societies, in interesting but urgent ways."—Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes The Sun
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Authority
- Essays
- By: Andrea Long Chu
- Narrated by: Andrea Long Chu
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since her canonical 2017 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers. Authority brings together Chu’s critical work across a wide range of media—novels, television, theater, video games—as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1.
-
-
Her book reviews are fantastic
- By NMwritergal on 05-24-25
By: Andrea Long Chu
-
Murderland
- Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
- By: Caroline Fraser
- Narrated by: Patty Nieman
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
By: Caroline Fraser
-
Whack Job
- A History of Axe Murder
- By: Rachel McCarthy James
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whack Job is the story of the axe, first as a convenient danger and then an anachronism, as told through the murders it has been employed in throughout history: from the first axe murder nearly half a million years ago, to the brutal harnessing of the axe in warfare, to its use in King Henry VIII's favorite method of execution, to Lizzie Borden and the birth of modern pop culture.
-
-
Very good for what it is
- By Ian on 05-30-25
-
The Little Book of Data
- Understanding the Powerful Analytics That Fuel AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End Up Saving the World
- By: Justin Evans
- Narrated by: Justin Evans
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Little Book of Data, each chapter illustrates one of the core principles of solving problems with data by featuring an expert who has solved a big problem with data—from the entrepreneur creating a “loneliness score” to the epidemiologist trying to save lives by finding disease “hotspots.”
By: Justin Evans
-
Project Mind Control
- Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA
- By: John Lisle
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous—even deadly—experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.”
By: John Lisle
-
Searches
- Selfhood in the Digital Age
- By: Vauhini Vara
- Narrated by: Vauhini Vara, Anastasia Davidson
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?
-
-
I think the title sums this complex book up well!
- By irontri455 on 05-07-25
By: Vauhini Vara
-
Authority
- Essays
- By: Andrea Long Chu
- Narrated by: Andrea Long Chu
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since her canonical 2017 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers. Authority brings together Chu’s critical work across a wide range of media—novels, television, theater, video games—as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1.
-
-
Her book reviews are fantastic
- By NMwritergal on 05-24-25
By: Andrea Long Chu
-
Murderland
- Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
- By: Caroline Fraser
- Narrated by: Patty Nieman
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
By: Caroline Fraser
-
Whack Job
- A History of Axe Murder
- By: Rachel McCarthy James
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whack Job is the story of the axe, first as a convenient danger and then an anachronism, as told through the murders it has been employed in throughout history: from the first axe murder nearly half a million years ago, to the brutal harnessing of the axe in warfare, to its use in King Henry VIII's favorite method of execution, to Lizzie Borden and the birth of modern pop culture.
-
-
Very good for what it is
- By Ian on 05-30-25
-
The Little Book of Data
- Understanding the Powerful Analytics That Fuel AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End Up Saving the World
- By: Justin Evans
- Narrated by: Justin Evans
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Little Book of Data, each chapter illustrates one of the core principles of solving problems with data by featuring an expert who has solved a big problem with data—from the entrepreneur creating a “loneliness score” to the epidemiologist trying to save lives by finding disease “hotspots.”
By: Justin Evans
-
Project Mind Control
- Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA
- By: John Lisle
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous—even deadly—experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.”
By: John Lisle
-
Searches
- Selfhood in the Digital Age
- By: Vauhini Vara
- Narrated by: Vauhini Vara, Anastasia Davidson
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?
-
-
I think the title sums this complex book up well!
- By irontri455 on 05-07-25
By: Vauhini Vara
-
So Many Stars
- An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color
- By: Caro De Robertis
- Narrated by: Caro De Robertis
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.
By: Caro De Robertis
-
Aggregated Discontent
- Confessions of the Last Normal Woman
- By: Harron Walker
- Narrated by: Harron Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—purely on account of our bodies.
By: Harron Walker
-
The Compound
- A Novel
- By: Aisling Rawle
- Narrated by: Lucy Boynton
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?
By: Aisling Rawle
-
Death
- Only for Those Who Shall Die—A Yogi's Guide to Living, Dying, and Beyond
- By: Sadhguru
- Narrated by: Sadhguru, Daniel Henning
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Death is an inevitable part of our lives, yet most societies have struggled to come to terms with it. Today, we continue to grapple with the enduring questions: What is death? Why do we fear it? What happens after death? Is it an end or a doorway to something beyond? In this unique, clear-sighted exploration of death, Sadhguru dwells extensively upon his inner experience as he expounds on the deeper aspects of death that are rarely spoken about.
By: Sadhguru
-
Ocean
- Earth's Last Wilderness
- By: Sir David Attenborough, Colin Butfield
- Narrated by: Sir David Attenborough, Colin Butfield
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science, Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on our planet—and the one which shapes the land we live on, regulates our climate and creates the air we breathe. The book showcase the oceans' remarkable resilience: they are the part of our world that can, and in some cases has, recovered the fastest, if we only give them the chance.
-
-
Amazing works
- By Klein Moretti on 05-16-25
By: Sir David Attenborough, and others
-
Kuleana
- A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i
- By: Sara Kehaulani Goo
- Narrated by: Sara Kehaulani Goo
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past. When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire.
-
Bad Nature
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Courage
- Narrated by: Cia Court
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States.
-
-
Sad life, sad ending
- By C. R. Choate on 05-17-25
By: Ariel Courage
-
India
- 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent
- By: Audrey Truschke
- Narrated by: Audrey Truschke
- Length: 24 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas through migration and trade. In this magisterial history, Audrey Truschke tells the fascinating story of the region historically known as India--which includes today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan—and the people who have lived there.
By: Audrey Truschke
-
Ancestors
- Identity and DNA in the Levant
- By: Pierre Zalloua
- Narrated by: Sean Rohani
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In recent years, genetic testing has become easily available to consumers across the globe, making it relatively simple to find out where your ancestors came from. But what do these test results actually tell us about ourselves? In Ancestors, Pierre Zalloua, a leading authority on population genetics, argues that these test results have led to a dangerous oversimplification of what one’s genetic heritage means. Genetic ancestry has become conflated with anthropological categories such as “origin,” “ethnicity,” and even “race” in spite of the complexities that underlie these concepts.
By: Pierre Zalloua
-
Apocalypse
- How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures
- By: Lizzie Wade
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: What happened? The good news is, we’ve been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we’re facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Perhaps, we begin to see, apocalypses do not destroy worlds, but create them anew.
By: Lizzie Wade
-
The British Are Coming
- The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777
- By: Rick Atkinson
- Narrated by: George Newbern, Rick Atkinson - introduction
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abridged edition: Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force.
-
-
Good book, Bad reader.
- By Sandy McCall on 08-01-21
By: Rick Atkinson
-
Make It Ours
- Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh
- By: Robin Givhan
- Narrated by: Robin Givhan
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh's family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh's mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man's rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste.
By: Robin Givhan