Issue: Empire

Immoderate Greatness

Immoderate Greatness explains how a civilization’s very magnitude conspires against it to cause downfall. Civilizations are hard-wired for self-destruction. They travel an arc from initial success to terminal decay and ultimate collapse due to intrinsic, inescapable biophysical limits combined with an inexorable trend toward moral decay and practical failure.

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Guns, Germs and Steel

Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis?

Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.

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Postcards from Babylon

The original gospel proclamation that the Lord of the nations was a crucified Galilean raised from the dead and that salvation was found in vowing allegiance to Jesus of Nazareth unleashed a shock wave that turned the Roman Empire upside down. Early Christianity was subversive and dangerous—dangerous for Christians and a threat to the keepers of the old order. Most of all Christianity was countercultural. But what about contemporary American Christianity? Is it the countercultural way of Jesus or merely a religious endorsement of Americanism?

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