The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power by Niall Ferguson - reviewīut there many new insights here, notably that for all the criticisms levelled at Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and others, it’s facile to blame the person at the top for all that goes wrong when usually the real culprit in a catastrophe is a system failure.

The role and importance of networks in world societies was the theme of Ferguson’s most recent book, The Square and the Tower.

It’s a useful reminder that what may feel like having unprecedented restrictions imposed on our lives today is nothing new. That means that network transmission, for instance of plague through trade routes in the past or Covid 19 via travel today, can be as important as the actual virulence of any disease in determining how many it kills, and it’s a mistake to rely on scientific solutions alone. How many people might be living near an earthquake or how willing they are to alter habits their habits are examples. One is that human behaviour in the face of danger can be critical in determining the impact of disasters, even natural ones. He roves from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 to the Black Death of the 14 thcentury, through to the two world wars, and on to the sinking of the Titanic, the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle a decade before that, to draw out common themes. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENTįerguson concedes, however, that much is uncertain, even when it comes to the long term consequences of the pandemic, and in fact it’s his historical analysis of how disasters occur, rather than his crystal ball gazing, that’s the most interesting part of his book.

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