The idea that extinction is a bad thing and diversity a good thing seems self-evident to us. But, by surveying more than two centuries of scholarship, science historian David Sepkoski shows that this was not always the prevailing belief. Rather than a book discussing mass extinction, Catastrophic Thinking is more meta than that, discussing how we have been discussing mass extinction. So, we have an interesting premise, but also an interesting author because—bonus detail—the work of his father, J. John (Jack) Sepkoski Jr., was instrumental in recognizing the Big Five mass extinctions. I could not wait to get to grips with this book.
Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene, written by David Sepkoski, published by The University of Chicago Press in October 2020 (hardback, 359 pages)
Extinction was long considered a theological non-starter in Western philosophy; God’s creation is perfect after all. But once some naturalists finally accepted fossils for what they were, extinction became a possibility and this is where Sepkoski starts to chart our thinking on extinction through four transitions. In the Victorian era extinction was initially seen as a regular process that was the logical consequence of natural selection. After the trauma of World War I it morphed into a cyclical process, extinction being the result of species reaching the end of their “life span”. The invention and deployment of nuclear weapons and the shadow cast by the Cold War prepared the way for a more catastrophic interpretation so that when the Alvarez team proposed a fiery end to the reign of the dinosaurs, it found fertile ground in the popular imagination. And that concern gave way to considering extinction as a ongoing slow-motion biodiversity crisis.
This exceedingly brief and simplified outline can barely do justice to the many subtleties and insights that Sepkoski unearths. Catastrophic Thinking stands out for the depth of its scholarship; next to careful reading of books and journal articles, he has interviewed some key figures and dives into private correspondence held in archives. Sepkoski previously wrote Rereading the Fossil Record in which he charted the rise of palaeobiology as a discipline, and he draws on that book here. For palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists there are thus plenty of fascinating science history details.
For example, how Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian views of slow and gradual change won out over Georges Cuvier’s ideas of periodical catastrophic revolutions and went on to influence Charles Darwin’s thinking. Sepkoski is at pains to explain that the uniformitarianism-versus-catastrophism dichotomy is itself an oversimplification and was only one of the concerns, another being the question of intrinsic versus extrinsic causes of extinction. Somewhat later, the rise of cyclical thinking questioned Darwin’s assumption that the fossil record is very fragmentary and incomplete; perhaps the sudden disappearance of species was not an artefact after all.
“Catastrophic Thinking stands out for the depth of its scholarship […] For palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists there are […] plenty of fascinating science history details.”
This, in turn, paved the way for catastrophic thinking when the question of the fossil record’s completeness got an empirical boost in the 1950s through the work of first Norman Newell and later Sepkoski’s father on fossil marine invertebrates. As Sepkoski explains, their remains are so plentiful, several orders of magnitude richer and more complete than vertebrate fossils, that they are considered to offer a true and reliable picture of the history of life. And this record was revealing five big mass extinctions and potentially many other smaller ones. This raised questions whether natural selection and Darwinian evolution might be suspended during such crises, which David Raup pithily summarized in the title of his book Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?
The catastrophic school of thought, too, planted the seeds for the next transition. After all, mass extinctions reveal themselves as a rapid and precipitous drop in biological diversity. Already in 1992, none other than E.O. Wilson argued that biodiversity loss due to human-caused habitat loss and climate change are plunging the world into a sixth mass extinction. This concept was further popularised in 2014 by Elizabeth Kolbert although, as Sepkoski explains, there is some pushback from palaeontologists.
I could go on, but the biological story is only one side of this book. Catastrophic Thinking is part of Chicago’s science•culture series which contains books examining the intersection of the two. A central theme for Sepkoski, reiterated throughout, is how he sees science and culture as inseparable: “[…] cultural and biological values surrounding extinction mirrored and reinforced one another” (p. 84). Attempting to disentangle the two is a fool’s errand that will confront you with “a serious chicken-and-egg problem” (p. 287). At any given historical period, science and culture combined to form an extinction “imaginary”, an academic term he borrows from art. This may sound somewhat abstract but once Sepkoski gets underway it quickly becomes clear what he means.
“A central theme for Sepkoski, reiterated throughout, is how he sees science and culture as inseparable: “[…] cultural and biological values surrounding extinction mirrored and reinforced one another“”
So, Darwin’s ideas were used to justify imperialism, slavery, and racism—the “extinction” of “primitive” tribes encountered by colonialists being perceived as a regrettable but also inevitable result of the strong vanquishing the weak. Sepkoski emphasizes how we cannot simply blame Darwin for this, even though his ideas fed off, and in turn fed into, Victorian-era culture and politics. The later cyclical thinking echoed contemporary historical accounts that emphasized the cyclical rise and of fall of civilizations. The idea of dinosaur-extinction-by-asteroid hit a collective nerve, especially when Carl Sagan and others made direct links with the potential consequences of a nuclear winter in case atomic weapons were to be used. And most recently the idea of biological diversity as a sign of a healthy planet has been applied to culture, as exemplified by the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.
The only nitpick I have is regarding the supposed periodicity of mass extinctions, roughly every 26 million years, that Sepkoski mentions several times. Without going into the nitty-gritty, he leaves out two recent books arguing in favour, but, more importantly, he does not mention that this idea is not widely accepted. Raup, who originally proposed it together with Sepkoski’s father, wrote in his 1999 afterword to The Nemesis Affair that “[…] the periodicity question is firmly planted on the back burner.” and is not supported by the consensus (p. 217). Indeed, Ted Nield wrote in 2011 that “the theory seems unable to go further. […] The jury awaits further evidence.” (p. 141), while Michael Benton added in 2019 that “The debate rumbles on […] but most have abandoned the idea of periodicity” (p. 264).
Leaving aside that minor detail, I found Catastrophic Thinking a thoroughly enjoyable and convincing read. My impression is that there has not been a reflection of this kind, at least in book form, since The Mass-Extinction Debates in 1994. Catastrophic Thinking presents a far wider and more inclusive take on the topic though and is positively bristling with fascinating insights. Obviously, this is a must-read for science historians, but palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists interested in the history of their discipline can also safely pick this up. Furthermore, thanks to the compelling arguments and accessible writing, this book should appeal strongly outside of these disciplines to anyone with an interest in palaeontology, evolution, or mass extinctions.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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What is the price of humanity’s progress? The cover of this book, featuring a dusty landscape of tree stumps, leaves little to the imagination. In the eyes of French journalist and historian Laurent Testot it has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Originally published in French in 2017, The University of Chicago Press published the English translation at the tail-end of 2020.
Early on, Testot makes clear that environmental history as a discipline can take several forms: studying both the impact of humans on the environment, and of the environment on human affairs, as well as putting nature in a historical context. Testot does all of this in this ambitious book as he charts the exploits of Monkey—his metaphor for humanity—through seven revolutions and three million years.
Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity, written by Laurent Testot, published by The University of Chicago Press in November 2020 (hardback, 452 pages)
To be frank, Testot deals with the first 2,988,000 years in the first two chapters. Understandably, as the pace of progress was initially slow, and comparatively little information is available to us from the palaeontological and archaeological records. Thus, he starts his history proper with the agricultural revolution ~12,000 years ago. Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.
Some examples include the near-simultaneous rise of agriculture in several places, with geography playing an important role in which plants and animals were available to domesticate, or the fall of the Late-Bronze Age civilizations in the 12th century BCE. The myth of virgin rainforests and the long history of agriculture practised in the jungle. The microbiological onslaught that accompanied the Columbian exchange when Christopher Columbus and other explorers brought new epidemics to the Americas, or the scourge of mosquito-borne diseases that later decimated European colonialists overseas. The medieval Little Ice Age and the global crises it precipitated, or the worldwide impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption. The Great Acceleration in the 20th century and the recognition of the Anthropocene. All of these have been chronicled at length in books and other publications.
“Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.”
Testot also mentions episodes that I was barely familiar with; partially, I suspect, because he can draw on the French history literature. For example the eruption of the Samalas volcano that seems to have served as a transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Or the 15th-century mining for silver in the Andes and the immense pollution that caused. Or the environmental roots of the expression “mad as a hatter” (it involves the 17th-century beaver trade). Cataclysms sometimes seems to forget it is an environmental history book. Thus, the environment takes a backseat when he describes the Axial Age, the period between 800 and 300 BCE that saw the birth of universal religions and philosophies in both Asia and Europe that are still with us today. Similarly, the chapter charting the rise of money, empires, and trade in Europe and Asia before the Common Era only at the very end examines the environmental impact of it all.
The book’s style might divide opinions. Testot throws all his eggs in the proverbial narrative basket. The book is clearly deeply researched, but the notes section at the end encompasses a mere 16 pages. Testot must have decided that supporting every claim and fact with a footnote would have distracted from the story he tells. Although the references contain many interesting books and publications, those wishing to check up on certain claims will have to do their own research. Furthermore, the book is strikingly devoid of photos, maps, graphs, and tables, bar a single chart of the human world population through time in the appendix. As such, I felt Cataclysms did not deliver on the dustjacket’s promise of providing “the full tally” the way e.g. Vaclav Smil did in Harvesting the Biosphere. Those wanting a more data-driven overview will probably want to check out Cataclysms‘s big contender for 2020, Daniel R. Headrick’s Humans versus Nature. I had the chance to rifle through a copy, though not yet read it in full. At 604 pages with a 100-page notes section (and some illustrations), it promises to be a denser read.
“[The book] will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope […] but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.”
Testot’s outlook for the future is bleak, though his concluding chapter wanders somewhat aimlessly. Rather than offering an overview of which planetary boundaries we have breached and how far in overshoot we are, Testot focuses on what he calls the upcoming Evolutive Revolution before turning to some likely consequences of climate change. This final revolution could either pan out as the pipe-dream of transhumanism where nano-, bio-, and information technologies converge into the singularity that would make humans immortal / obsolete as Artificial Intelligence takes over (something Testot is critical of), or we may end up as mutants in the chemical cesspit that we are making of our planet. Throw in a conclusion and an epilogue to the English edition that both reiterate main points from the book, and it starts to feel a little bit like Tolkien’s struggle to let the reader go in the last book of The Lord of the Rings.
Environmental history has become a rather crowded subject and opinions will probably be divided on whether Cataclysms stands out from the crowd sufficiently. It will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope—Testot knows how to spin a fine yarn and provides an entry point to many fascinating chapters in world history that readers will want to explore further. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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The best way to introduce this book is to quote the first sentence of the blurb: “Techno-Fix challenges the pervasive belief that technological innovation will save us from the dire consequences of the 300-year fossil-fuelled binge known as modern industrial civilization“. Stinging, provocative, and radical, Techno-Fix puts its fingers on many a sore spot with its searing critique.
Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment, written by Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann, published by New Society Publishers in September 2011 (paperback, 435 pages)
You might ask why, in 2021, I would bother reviewing a book published ten years ago. Both for the prosaic reason that I have had this book for some years without reading it, and because I am working on a little something that I cannot divulge yet. Plus, as it turns out, because this book is still relevant despite having been published in 2011.
The Huesemanns, Michael a biotechnologist with an interest in sustainability, Joyce an academic and activist, pull no punches in Techno-Fix. Our technology has brought us tremendous affluence and a world population growth spurt, but it also has unintended consequences that are both unavoidable and unpredictable. Some examples discussed here are climate change resulting from the generation of energy, the unknown effects of most synthetic chemicals, the pollution accompanying industrial activities, or the way the introduction of the car reshaped the world.
Even more outspoken is their statement that most technology is exploitative, abusing ecosystems, animals, and other humans. The industrial and globalised nature of much technology blunts us to this by creating distance in either space or time between exploiter and exploited. Do you know where your stuff comes from and who made it? Do you have a care for the planet your grandchildren will inherit? With the same fury that would later characterise Abundant Earth, the authors speak of the human domination of nature and the brainwashing by television and other mass media. The frequent references to TV might seem outdated given how online social media has ballooned in the last decade, but it has arguably not changed the beast much. And where free-market trade does not get us the needed resources, “high-tech military technology plays a key role in ensuring the continued exploitation and control of natural resources that are essential to maintaining the materialistic consumer lifestyle” (p. 68). Theirs is a bleak outlook on our modern society indeed.
“”high-tech military technology plays a key role in ensuring the continued exploitation and control of natural resources that are essential to maintaining the materialistic consumer lifestyle” (p. 68). Theirs is a bleak outlook on our modern society indeed.”
Surely, new technology can fix the problems old technology created? To the Huesemanns, counter-technologies such as geo-engineering schemes are like handing you another spade as you are digging your own grave—they come with their own unintended consequences. Furthermore, they write, efficiency gains (e.g. dematerialisation) have their limits and are often followed by increased consumption, a phenomenon known as the Jevons paradox. Ironically, despite increased affluence in the developed world, psychological research shows that happiness and well-being have not increased. Instead, we are stuck on a hedonic treadmill, furiously desiring ever more. The profit motive behind most technological developments results in solutions that benefit corporations and their shareholders, not the public at large.
Since these drawbacks are known, why does the belief in technological progress persist? The authors draw parallels between religious faith and techno-optimism, with the latter rising as the former waned. Furthermore, seemingly objective practices such as risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses are skewed towards continued technological development, downplaying or neglecting externalized costs. Finally, they take serious issue with the uncritical acceptance of new technologies due to the widespread belief that progress is inevitable and that technology is value-neutral, i.e. just a tool that can be used for good or evil.
Up to this point, much of what they write resonates with me, but I found their proposed solutions a mixed bag, strongly disagreeing with some of it. Since we cannot hex our way out of our problems with more technology, we need, I agree, a paradigm shift. They draw an interesting parallel with Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Just as scientific dogmas disappear not because minds are changed but because the old guard dies, future generations will change the way we live. Current generations will, by and large, be too set in their ways, too unwilling to give up their affluence. Plus, expect pushback from industries and corporations that stand to lose the most.
“To the Huesemanns, counter-technologies […] are like handing you another spade as you are digging your own grave—they come with their own unintended consequences.”
I think it should be stressed at this point that the Huesemanns are not technophobes advocating a return to the caves (although some of what they say is not far off). Technology has a role to play if it is employed more responsibly. To avoid stepping off the Seneca Cliff into wholesale collapse, they envision a transition to a steady-state economy that acknowledges planetary boundaries (some Planetary Accounting might help) and practises long-term sustainability.
The latter would require three things. First, 100% renewable energy generation. This, they admit, brings its own share of problems, one of which they remarkably do not even mention: the need for a vast infrastructure constructed from non-renewable materials. Speaking of which, second, we need to use renewable resources exclusively and phase out non-renewable resources, or fully recycle them where this is not possible. Other than the difficulties—if not impossibility—of finding replacements for most non-renewable resources (including basic ones such as all metals), they pass over the fact that materials cannot be endlessly recycled, requiring a constant input of virgin material. Third, waste can only be discharged at rates than can be assimilated by ecosystems, and those that cannot be biodegraded (read: most synthetic chemicals) should be discontinued. They acknowledge that, clearly, this would require a sea change in our attitudes: a society that embraces self-limitation rather than unfettered abundance. All of this is necessary, I agree, but it also seems almost unimaginable. If the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed one thing, it is how willingly people will relinquish liberties and accept restrictions imposed upon them.
There were a further three issues raised here that I mildly to strongly disagree with. First, they are justifiedly very critical of the corruption of medicine by the so-called medico-industrial complex, specifically pharmaceutical companies. Rather, we should focus on prevention and lifestyle changes (sure), accept the inevitability of death (agreed), and embrace holistic medicine (hmmm). Once they start talking of the power of placebo effects and the body’s innate ability to heal itself I become a bit uneasy. There is a kernel of truth in there but, in my opinion, you are at the top of the slide that reads “pseudoscience this way”. Second, they appear to contradict themselves by stressing the importance of efficiency in saving precious resources but also wanting things to go small-scale and local again, holding up organic agriculture as a shining example (something of which I am sceptical). You cannot have it both ways, we scale up production processes for more than just profitability. Third, they surprisingly really have it in for genetic engineering. Other than completely ignoring the pervasiveness of horizontal gene transfer (one could say nature invented genetic modification billions of years before we did), they are unwilling to acknowledge it will be one of the necessary tools to keep feeding the world, deal with the impact of climate change on crops, or that we can take the best of both approaches.
“the Huesemanns are not technophobes advocating a return to the caves (although some of what they say is not far off). Technology has a role to play if it is employed more responsibly.”
The Huesemanns acknowledge human overpopulation at several points: “More people generally translate into more problems” (p. 44) and unless “the size of the human population [is] stabilized and reduced, and the materialistic consumer lifestyle largely abandoned, there is little chance that our environmental problems will be solved” (p. 83). This is more than most authors do. Shame, then, that they do not dedicate a chapter to the thorny questions of whether we should control world population, what population size is optimal for the planet, and how many children to have (if any).
Instead, their last chapter felt to me like barking up the wrong tree. It calls for “critical science” (sensu Ravetz), which would stand in opposition to current scientific practice. Scientists need to take responsibility for their work, refuse dubious research financed by corporations, and abandon the excuse that they are not responsible for the end-uses. These are some really good points, but to put the onus almost completely on scientists struck me as, frankly, ridiculous. Some of their claims here really irked me. People choose this profession because of the relatively good income? Or the claim on page 329 that scientists and engineers do not really mind that problems are not solved as it guarantees their long-term employment? I normally hear a related version of that argument from climate-change deniers. I do not know what planet the authors live on, but my personal experience in academia showed me a world where you routinely work 60 to 80 hours a week on grant money or (if you are really lucky) a 40-hour contract while chasing short-term projects (known as PhD and postdoc positions) well into your forties before having a shot at a permanent position. When conditions are this exploitative it is no wonder many choose the job security and decent income offered by companies. If you want to keep scientists out of the clutches of well-paid corporate jobs and have them act as whistle-blowers you will have to properly reward and protect them, something only briefly acknowledged here.
In light of my criticism, would I recommend Techno-Fix? Yes, there is much I thoroughly agree with here. I applaud the authors for tabling controversial ideas and challenging readers with probing questions and assignments in an appendix. Furthermore, the book is thoroughly researched and annotated, very readable (including regular, useful summaries), and still relevant.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Not long after posting my review of Can Democracy Work? I received an email from Dr Roslyn Fuller: since I had mentioned her book In Defence of Democracy, would I be interested in reviewing it? And so, a parcel arrived at Inquisitive Biologist HQ my living room with two books, with Beasts and Gods providing valuable background reading to In Defence of Democracy.
Many people feel disenchanted with politics, but can you really articulate why? Bar a select few politically engaged individuals I know (I am not one of them), most of us remain stuck in conspiratorial grumblings at the pub about corrupt politicians. Published in 2015, Beasts and Gods lays bare how modern democracies are invariably broken, examines democracy in ancient Athens, and asks what we can learn from them.
Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose, written by Roslyn Fuller, published by Zed Books in November 2015 (paperback, 414 pages)
Fuller is the director of the Solonian Democracy Institute which researches alternative democratic practices. She is particularly fascinated by Athenian democracy. After all, they invented this whole democracy thing – the ancient Greek word demokratia means people power. Though you might be surprised just how much their ideas and practices differed from ours.
When we say “democracy”, we tend to think of elections. The Athenians ended up ditching these in favour of taking all decisions by themselves. Astonishingly, assembly meetings, which formed the heart of Athenian democracy, were typically attended by a constantly rotating cast of 5000-6000 people, some 10-20% of the eligible population. And these meetings were not an occasional but a weekly occurrence where anyone could speak to the assembled to put forth their ideas. There were officials to keep this and other processes running, but they were appointed annually at random by a glorified Lotto machine, a cleroterion, complete with coloured balls. The best part? Because frequent mass participation was obviously a time consuming though highly valued activity, people were paid for their participation. Seems crazy? Perhaps, says Fuller, but it worked.
Now look at us, she writes. What we call “representative democracy”, where we elect politicians to make decisions for us, is, at best, a symbolic democracy, but more often closer to an oligarchy, a rule of the few.
“When we say “democracy”, we tend to think of elections. The Athenians ended up ditching these in favour of taking all decisions by themselves.”
First, take that “representative” part. Every vote counts, right? Sure, but as Fuller shows, not every vote matters. And this is especially true of the electoral system known as first-past-the-post voting, used in the US, the UK, Canada, and India. She shows how votes can be wasted. How the way they are totted up per district often results in a disconnect between the actual number of votes a political party receives overall (the popular vote) and how seats in a parliament are allotted, meaning parties that lose the popular vote can still win elections. And how politicians are actively gaming the system by manipulating the boundaries of voting districts through the practice of gerrymandering (for those interested, CGP Grey did a great series of explanatory videos on this). Other democratic voting systems (single transferable vote and several proportional voting systems) examined here are less inaccurate but still imperfect: the number of elected politicians is simply too small to accurately reflect the population. And that is just the beginning.
A large part of the book goes on to show that this small number of politicians has another drawback: it offers a multi-faceted pressure point for those with money. Political campaigns are largely financed by corporate backers in return for favours: favourable tax regimes, lax environmental or public health regulations – you do not have to look hard for scandals. And what of participatory tools for the average voter such as petitions, protests, or visits and letters to representatives? Next to a readily-ignored facade, they are drowned out by corporate interests. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs)? Bar your Oxfam or Greenpeace who do genuine good, most are, in Fuller’s words, umbrella organisations for corporate interests or privately funded think tanks, offering another channel for the wealthy to lobby and influence governments.
“The disproportionate influence of wealth extends further up still into international spheres, to the point that “private financiers [can] reduce whole nations to a condition not much different to indentured servitude“”
This disproportionate influence of wealth extends further up still into international spheres. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were formed to stabilise the global economy after two world wars and an economic depression. But their imperfect implementation has generated another lever for vested interests to influence who gets international loans and what strings are attached to them, to the point that “private financiers [can] reduce whole nations to a condition not much different to indentured servitude“.
And so we have ended up with a system where money begets power, and power begets money, resulting in increasing economic inequality and a disenfranchised electorate that is given the “privilege” of token votes in elections. You will probably have heard people grumble along these lines or grumble along those lines yourself. Even so, my usual response used to be one of: “Really? That sounds very cynical and borderline conspiracy theory”.
The power of Beasts and Gods is twofold here. First, in plain English devoid of hyperbole, it clarifies that the situation is indeed as bad as it seems. But more importantly, it proposes solutions, specifically by re-examining Athenian democracy. Though there are aspects we would not want to emulate in our times (only men with Athenian citizenship were allowed to participate, for example), their system had a key benefit. Mass participation meant that power was too diffuse to be bought by the wealthy. But how would mass-participation work when countries now have tens to hundreds of millions of voters?
“We have ended up with a system where money begets power, and power begets money, resulting in increasing economic inequality and a disenfranchised electorate that is given the “privilege” of token votes in elections.”
Fuller envisions a digital democracy where the internet would enable everyone to participate, and she provides examples of existing initiatives of participatory budgeting and online citizens’ assemblies to show how this is already happening. Part of me reflexively responds by linking to Mark Manson’s essay The World Is Fucked and I’m Pretty Sure It’s the Internet’s Fault whose sharp observation that “when you give the average person an infinite reservoir of human wisdom, they will not Google for the higher truth that contradicts their own convictions” puts a damper on this kind of online optimism. But maybe it is me who is too cynical now – let’s not beat it until we have tried it, it cannot be worse than what we have now.
Fuller sees two major obstacles: mass media and economic inequality. The former are currently in the deep pockets of those same vested interests, in case you were wondering where some of the money goes. And Fuller refers to the perhaps unsurprising research that shows just how easily people’s opinions can be influenced by simply repeating a message often enough. The latter can be overcome by enforcing existing tax laws and by capping people’s income. I mean, how much money do you need? One further obstacle that occurred to me, but that is not addressed here: existing laws. None of this will be easy or quick. But, Fuller reminds us, the Athenians did not invent their democracy overnight either. The alternative, as became apparent when I reviewed The Great Leveler, is that it ends in tears when bloody wars or insurrections level the playing field.
Beasts and Gods is a pleasantly accessible book, even when, like myself, you are not well versed in politics and economics. Fuller injects her writing with a welcome dose of wit and strident attitude to prevent this from being a boring or dry read. More importantly, she provides solutions. Having just shown how broken democracy currently is, you might be surprised she nevertheless defends it. For that, see my review of In Defence of Democracy.
Disclosure: The author provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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