To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change
About this audiobook
In a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes—from the devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050—has produced a relentless succession of rising empires and fading world orders.
During the long centuries of Iberian and British imperial rule, the quest for new forms of energy led to the development of the colonial sugar plantation as a uniquely profitable kind of commerce. In a time when issues of race and social justice have arisen with pressing urgency, the book explains how the plantation’s extraordinary profitability relied on a production system that literally worked the slaves to death, creating an insatiable appetite for new captives that made the African slave trade a central feature of modern capitalism for over four centuries.
After surveying past centuries roiled by imperial wars, national revolutions, and the struggle for human rights, the closing chapters use those hard-won insights to peer through the present and into the future.
By rendering often-opaque environmental science in lucid prose, the book explains how climate change and changing world orders will shape the life opportunities for younger generations, born at the start of this century, during the coming decades that will serve as the signposts of their lives—2030, 2050, 2070, and beyond.
About the author
Alfred W. McCoy is the author of several nonfiction books, including In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. He is also the author of Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, which won the Kahin Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. His best-known book, The Politics of Heroin, stirred controversy when the CIA tried to block its publication in 1972, but it has remained in print for nearly fifty years, has been translated into nine languages, and is generally regarded as the “classic” work on global drug trafficking. He holds the Harrington chair of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches classes on the Vietnam War, modern empires, and US foreign policy.
Dan Woren is an American voice actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator. He has worked extensively in animation, video games, and feature films. He is best known for his many roles in anime productions such as Bleach and as the voice of Sub-Zero in the video game Mortal Kombat.
