Step away from the everyday and enter a world of ideas. Expert-built courses on the big questions, read and talked through with a guide who never tires of yours. Summaries hand you the view from the summit; here you make the climb, and the view belongs to you.
Ten questions to begin with. Each one a journey across several disciplines, at your pace, with as many detours as you want.
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This term's featured volume.
From the catalogue · Volume the Second
Why Do Civilisations Rise and Fall?
Eight evenings. Four disciplines. One question that will not leave you alone.
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Contents
I.Rome, the morning afterWhat actually stopped working
We begin the morning after the fall and work backwards, the way a doctor reads a chart.
II.Coinage and trustHow an economy hollows
You will hold a debased denarius in your mind's hand and feel what it no longer buys.
III.Complexity and its costTainter's ratchet
Every imperial problem hires a clerk; Tainter counts what all the clerks cost.
IV.The ecology of collapseSoil, climate, plague
The land and the weather get their say, and for two evenings history is a natural science.
V.The view from Chang'anThe view from the East
The Tang watched their own storm gather, and kept better notes than Rome ever did.
VI.What stands todayReading our own moment
After this evening you will read the morning's news with Tainter at your shoulder.
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How an evening with us goes.
I.
Immersion
The day's clothes come off at the door. You step into a subject the way Machiavelli entered his study: unhurried, absorbed, among the best minds on the question.
II.
Connection
One subject alone rarely satisfies a big question. Your guide draws the lines across history, science and philosophy as you go, and checks each idea has truly landed.
III.
Enlightenment
The reward of the climb. The moment the pieces fit, and you leave seeing the world a little differently than when you sat down.
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“I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for.”
Machiavelli, to Francesco Vettori · 1513
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A page from a conversation.
A quiet room, late in the evening. The day's clothes are off at the door. A lamp, a chair, two voices.
The Guide
The world is full of questions worth getting lost in. Choose one, and I'll help you find your way deeper.
You
Why did Rome actually fall? I've heard a dozen reasons.
The Guide
All twelve are half-right, which is the interesting part. Before I argue for any of them, tell me: what do you think an empire needs to stay standing?
You
Grain in the stores, soldiers on the border, and a story everyone still believes.
The Guide
Hold those three. Over our first evening we will watch Rome lose them, in an order that surprises most readers, and an economist, a farmer and a bishop will each insist theirs went first. Shall we start with the coin in your pocket?
Leaf i of v
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What your guide does.
❧Asks before it answers
Put your question to the guide and it will usually return one of its own. What you already believe is where every lesson starts, as the best tutors have always known.
❧Checks an idea has landed before building on it
Before the next idea goes on top of the last, you will be asked to say it back in your own words. If it wobbles, you stay with it until it stands.
❧Keeps your place across every volume
Leave off mid-chapter on a Tuesday and resume on a Friday. The guide remembers what struck you, including in a volume you finished months ago.
❧Draws the line from one discipline to the next
Ask a history question and expect an economist's aside. The big questions have never respected faculty walls, and neither does your guide.
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Terms of subscription.
❧Tariff · Payable monthly or by the year
The Reader£19 a month
Your first question is free. All ten volumes, your guide, and as many detours as the evening allows.
The Patron£180 a year
Everything the Reader receives, plus the print annual, bound and posted once a year.
All figures indicative · Confirmed on enrolment · London & Hong Kong
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Notes to the reader.
Do I need a degree?
No. You need an evening. The guide meets you where you stand and climbs from there.
How is this different from podcasts and summaries?
They end where you begin: you can ask the next question, and the one after that.
How does the guide know its material?
Every course is built by named experts on the question. The guide reasons from their material and shows its sources when you ask.
Can I wander off the course?
Detours are the point. The itinerary is yours; the guide keeps the map.
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Choose your first question.
Membership opens with ten courses, a standing invitation to argue with your guide, and nothing to prove to anyone.