I first discovered Helen Thompson in the now defunct podcast 'Talking Politics' hosted by David Runciman. Runciman and Thompson conversed at an exceptionally high intellectual level, I found. Helen Thompson is an erudite and incisive analyst of contemporary global affairs. Her commentary is steeped in history, economics, politics, and in particular the interplay of energy markets with the world in which we live. Although this thesis does have some explanatory power for the fall of the Roman Republic that Polybius foresaw, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as a long historical generalization. But I was quite taken with his notion that each form of government is destroyed by its own excess, generated from within itself by its own inherent and particular vice. While we are not accustomed to thinking about democracy in this way, I think we can see this phenomenon quite clearly when we reflect upon the end of various European monarchical regimes—take the ancien régime in France or Czarist Russia. The question then becomes whether we should treat modern democracy as somehow immune to the problem. Now, obviously, many people would argue that it is, following Tocqueville in treating democracy as ultimately irreversible, at least at a certain level of economic development. But I start off as a skeptic on providential claims about democracy.

Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century - Goodreads Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century - Goodreads

Thompson's core contention as noted in her introduction is that 'energy has largely gone unrecognized as an important cause of (recent) geopolitical and economic fault lines.' This is not unexpected. The primacy given to ideological and cultural factors in modern histories seems reasonable. I know Helen Thompson from one of my favourite podcasts, Talking Politics (which sadly has ended recently). She’s an extremely knowledgeable scholar so it was no question I would read her book as soon as it comes out.Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

How to Get the History of the Financial Order All Wrong

There is a November 2022 interview on the Demand Side podcast where the author explains how the book gestated since 2018 especially its delay due to Covid-19. Thompson describes how she divided the book into geopolitics driven by energy supply particularly oil and gas and finance particularly the dismantlement of Bretton woods and democratic politics which cannot be separated from nation states.I read non-fiction because I want to learn something. A clear, concise, and convincing argument should be made. I want to walk away thinking, “yes — that makes sense”. A really excellent retelling of the modern political history of Western Europe and the US through the lens of energy. What Thompson does is not so much to introduce new stories, but to frame what you already know in a new and novel way.