Gibbon’s great work presents a staggering parade of crimes and horrors throughout the “civilized” world over the course of a thousand years or so.  It makes the crimes and horrors of ISIL seem mild and contained by contrast — but also gives a harrowing preview of what the world could easily become again if fanaticism and negotiation through unrestrained violence take the upper hand.  Throw in the crimes and horrors that will ensue from the effects of global warming, and The History Of the Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire becomes essential reading to prepare ourselves for a new millennium of ubiquitous human catastrophe.

You and I will see only the beginning of this epoch of catastrophe, but it will go harder with ours than with later generations because we will remember a time before the calamity became irreversible.