Ever noticed how the biggest guy at the gym eventually throws out his shoulder trying to impress people who aren't watching? Empires are kind of like that. Grand, ripped, convinced of their own immortality... right up until they spectacularly collapse.
From the dusty plains where Sargon the Great forged the world's first empire out of ambition and poisoned wine, to the boardrooms where modern financial institutions dictate terms that feel suspiciously colonial, the cycle repeats with terrifying, often darkly funny, regularity. The Gravity of Glory takes you on a whirlwind tour through five millennia of human striving, hubris, and inevitable historical face-plants.
Witness the meticulous machinery of Egyptian bureaucracy built to defy eternity (while obsessing over beer rations). See how Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon not just with armies, but by being surprisingly chill about other people's gods. Follow Alexander's world tour that ended less with a bang and more with a hangover and generals squabbling over the inheritance. Marvel at Rome's genius for road-building and accidentally inventing the systems that would eventually eat itself from within. Watch Mansa Musa make it rain gold in Cairo, inadvertently tanking the economy for a decade. Ride with the terrifyingly efficient Mongols, sail with the Portuguese and Spanish as they stumble upon new worlds and old vices, and observe Britannia ruling the waves until the waves (and the bills) got too high.
Why do they rise? Raw ambition, military innovation, administrative genius, economic exploitation, sheer luck, and the ability to convince large numbers of people to die for an idea. Why do they fall? See above, plus overextension, internal rot, stubborn refusal to adapt, catastrophic climate change, and the inconvenient fact that conquered people eventually get tired of being conquered.
The Gravity of Glory explores the patterns, the paradoxes, and the persistent, often brutal, human urge to build something magnificent ? even if it's destined to crumble.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme... often like a particularly grim limerick.
