I’d like to add a rare but – I hope – welcome honorific to the titles of Archdruid, Green Wizard and – I believe – Home Brewer already associated with John Michael Greer, the author of these collected blog posts published previously on-line as part of ‘The Archdruid Report’.

I would also call John Michael Greer a Reader. Throughout his essays, he references other works which he has clearly studied and valued. I counted 32 of them, from "Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the Second-Century Pagan World" (pg. 160) to "Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier" (pg. 266), whose subjects span a period of time of eighteen centuries. There is no doubt that they inform his work and, in the case of Arnold Toynbee’s "A Study of History" (pp. 181, 313 and elsewhere), inspire it.

Here, with an occasional diversion to reflect on other topical issues, such as the discussions at the Age of Limits conference in May 2012, the author presents a coruscating analysis of the lifecycle of empires, with special reference to the decline of the American empire in an age of catabolic collapse.

There’s no getting round the fact that our age of abundant, fossil-fuel energy-consumption is ending and Greer points out many of the likely consequences of that demise with extraordinary clarity, some of which make for uncomfortable reading. Politicians, religious leaders and educationalists all come in for criticism in a sometimes intense, sometimes contrary style which nevertheless hits home.

I was discomfited by Greer’s thought experiment on the end of the British empire in "America: The Gasoline War" (pp. 116-123), and his essays on politics ("The Degeneration of Politics" on pp. 245-253) and democracy ("Consuming", "Producing" & "Enacting" "Democracy" on pp. 319-345) are, in my opinion, worthy of set-text study, as part of an honest education. I also enjoyed Greer’s diversion into the rarefied geology of sea gases in "Seascape, With Methane Plumes" on pp. 132-139).

Leavening the mix are Greer’s notes on the End of the World, or rather the failed predictions made about the End of the World throughout history. He makes the point that there have been so many of them that you could highlight one a week for a year, and this is precisely what he does in his ‘End of the World of the Week’ section at the conclusion of each essay.

Thus, we are treated to everything from Sulpicius Severus’ report of the birth of the Antichrist 1,600 years ago (End of the World of the Week No. 3) to Peter Jay & Michael Stewart’s prediction of economic collapse in their book "Apocalypse 2000" (End of the World of the Week No. 53). Neither these nor any of the other predictions highlighted here and in the author’s work "Apocalypse Not" actually happened.

Notwithstanding these light-hearted observations at the end of each of his essays, this is a serious work by John Michael Greer, which merits reading. As the author says in a different place, reading it gives you the taste of another’s thoughts. ( )