Book review: End Times, by Peter Turchin

Cheerful title, this one: End Times – Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, but an important topic from an unusual analyst. Peter Turchin is a ‘mathematical biologist’ by training, specialising in data science and ecology. He then took that expertise into a new field to pioneer the use of data science in analysing historical change, a discipline he calls ‘cliodynamics’. (Yes, I know that sounds like the fine tuning of small French cars, but the clio here is the la...