A first rate history of last year.
I've never read history so close to the time before, yet this feels essential. Never before have a couple of years felt like so much more!
This is my first book (won't be the last!) by the author though I have followed his writing for years. The introduction and conclusion feel like the better newsletters or articles - immense in scope yet surgical in getting to the core issues. Truly global with dense and intracite specialist knowledge in specific hard to understand topics.
The chapters feel much more like standard history chapters, detailed, well researched and sticking within the outlines provided.
Overall there is a pulsating narrative, outstanding writing, moments of great levity and the raising of the most important questions for the future of us all.
Maybe the strongest point I absorbed was the immense failure to provide the funding to vaccinate the world - a task costing just billions when the world marshalled trillions in response to the economic crisis, it is clear to everyone that it pays for itself many times over - in days. Yet it is not done. The money to do it can be borrowed at negative interest rates by any major economy. Yet it is not done.
Bioshocks (and other shocks) will come again, they will be worse, will we be any better?
Highly recommended.