Why Empires Fall

A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work. – Linda Colley * Financial Times *A useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather’s scholarship shines through its pages … an interesting polemic. – Simon Heffer * Daily Telegraph *[A] provocative short book … with a novel twist. * The Economist *[A] fascinating book. – Martin Wolf * Financial Times, ‘Best Summer Books of 2023: Economics’ *A short, sober (and sobering) account of where we are now and where we might be heading … lucid and absorbing … jaw-dropping facts and figures. – Carlos F. Noreña * Times Literary Supplement *This essay has changed my view both of the past and the present … It’s convincing and relevant to the west today. – Carlo Rovelli * The Observer *Two experienced scholars lucidly engage in contemporary debates about the future of the West and its parallels to the Roman Empire. This is comparative history done right. – David Potter, author of DISRUPTION: WHY THINGS CHANGEEnlightening … Heather and Rapley’s book is not pessimistic. It does not predict a collapse of the West analogous to the tragic collapse of Rome in the fifth century. On the contrary, it offers a penetrating historical analogy as a tool for reading the present, so that it can help us avoid the political mistakes of the late empire. – Carlo Rovelli * Corriere della Sera *

John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies. His books include Understanding Development, which remains in widespread use as a textbook in development studies, Globalization and Inequality and most recently Twilight of the Money Gods- Economics as a Religion and How it all Went Wrong.

Peter Heather is Chair of Medieval History at King’s College, London. His many books include The Fall of the Roman Empire, Empires and Barbarians- Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe, The Restoration of Rome, Rome Resurgent and, most recently, Christendom.