Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Magisterial reach … immensely readable … Ferguson [applies] his prodigious intellect to placing the present pandemic on a wider historic canvas. – Douglas Alexander * Financial Times *This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson’s Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspective in a book of dazzling range and rigour. – Fraser Nelson * The Spectator *Niall Ferguson’s Doom is often insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant. * New York Times *A superb history of the lost art of handling a crisis. * The Telegraph *Stimulating … Each chapter of this thought-provoking book is worth reading for the ideas, perceptiveness and well-told stories of landmark events … It’s a useful reminder that what may feel like having unprecedented restrictions imposed on our lives today is nothing new… readers will find much to relish. – Martin Bentham * Evening Standard *Elegant, pacey, gripping … a wealth of deep research. * The Economist *Doom covers an impressive sweep of history at a lively narrative clip and weaves a lot of disparate strands together into an engaging picture. – Rafael Behr * The Guardian *Timely and refreshing … An informative, amusing and thought-provoking read that is full of steadying good sense for these troubled times. – Peter Neville-Hadley * South China Morning Post *Performs a crucial public service … Doom is far more than just a page-turner, though that it certainly is: it’s that most precious of things in a history book - an account of the past that truly helps us understand where we are today. – Ryan Bourne * CapX *

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain’s most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His most recent book is The Square and the Tower.