The question of how we can learn useful lessons from history, which would help us navigate the troubled waters ahead has been much on my mind. You can find some of my thoughts on this subject in my review of Walter Scheidel’s Escape from Rome. It’s also an important theme

Matt Yglesias, responding to a tweet by Noah Smith today, wrote: Seen a lot of Turchin citations lately but I think the bar for buying into cyclical views of history should be *really* high. There were other, similar comments on Twitter. I respond on my blog, because it can be hard to