Niall Ferguson: The Politics of Catastrophe

Disasters are inherently inevitable in life. We cannot predict the next earthquake, wildfire, financial crisis, war or pandemic, but we can predict how to handle each situation better. Unexpected calamities have happened all throughout human history, yet even in the 21st century we are ill-prepared to recover from them. In the new book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, popular historian Niall Ferguson explores the reasoning behind this phenomena and offers solutions on how to handle unforeseen circumstances of mass misfortune.

Ferguson has spent his academic career lecturing on the international, financial, and economic history of British and American imperialism. In his new book, Ferguson uses centuries of knowledge to understand the complex pathologies at work that make societies fail in the face of disaster. He offers the lesson he says the West urgently needs to learn if we want to handle the next crisis better and avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.

Join us as Niall Ferguson offers an explanation of disaster response and strategies to make us better at handling the next catastrophe we will inevitably face.

NOTES

The Commonwealth Club thanks the Ken & Jackie Broad Family Fund for its partnership.

Ferguson photo by Zoe Law.

SPEAKERS

Niall Ferguson
Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Author, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe; Twitter @nfergus

In Conversation with Maya Jasanoff
Coolidge Professor of History, Harvard University

💯SUBSCRIBE for more VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/user/commonwealthclub
📆 UPCOMING EVENTS: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events
🎉 BECOME a MEMBER: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/membership
💰 DONATE NOW: https://support.commonwealthclub.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=298
📺➕📻 Watch & Listen https://www.commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen

CWC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonwealthclub/
CWC Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cwclub/
CWC Twitter https://twitter.com/cwclub

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 400 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.

Founded in 1903 in San Francisco California 🌉, The Commonwealth Club has played host to a diverse and distinctive array of speakers, from Teddy Roosevelt in 1911 to Hillary Clinton in 2010. Along the way, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have all given landmark speeches at the Club.

Видео Niall Ferguson: The Politics of Catastrophe канала Commonwealth Club of California