Desastre

Disasters are difficult to foresee, but today we should be better prepared against catastrophes than the Romans when Vesuvius erupted or the Italians when the Black Death struck in the Middle Ages. After all, we have the science. However, as the coronavirus crisis has shown, the response of most developed countries to a new pathogen has been rather clumsy. How is it possible? Niall Ferguson argues, among many other things, that previously entrenched pathologies already visible in our responses to other disasters of the past were at stake. From various disciplines, including economics and network science, Disaster offers not only a history, but also a general theory of disasters, exposing how our complex and atrophied governance systems are unable to cope with crises. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to be less bureaucratic and more resilient if they are to avoid irreversible decline.