In this exceptional, transformative intervention, Heather and Rapley explore the uncanny parallels - and productive differences - between the two cases, moving beyond the familiar tropes of invading barbarians and civilizational decay to learn new lessons from ancient history. In Why Empires Fall, historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley use this Roman past to think anew about the contemporary West, its state of crisis, and what paths we could take out of it. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence. This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. What can the fall of Rome teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist, both experts in their field, investigate
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