If this book had been published a century later it would have been H. G. Wells' blog. It's a collection of articles and observations, some very short, published in the very early 20th century. It's interesting for a number of reasons. Wells was writing when the British Empire was at its absolute peak: a capitalist, English-speaking global trade empire with a representative democracy at its summit -- just a decade or two before the beginning of its decline. Sound familiar? Some of the issues Wells discusses are still very relevant today. From the shortfalls of the two-party parliamentary system, to the declining fertility of the capitalist world to the growing income inequalities in the United States; those problems have still not been solved in more than a hundred years. Wells also predicted war and financial collapse as his possible civilisation-enders, some years before World War One and the Great Depression.

Some of Wells' hundred year old observations and predictions have not aged well of course. He was very concerned with British folk being replaced by 'the wrong sort' or the 'lower classes'. He reckoned atomic energy could be mastered 'in a couple of centuries' (actual: 36 years). But even the failed predictions and fusty Empire attitudes are interesting and well-reasoned. ( )