The entire year is 2393, and the world is nearly unrecognizable. Clear warnings of weather catastrophe went overlooked for decades, resulting in soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and-finally-the devastation now referred to as the fantastic Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration from the Western Antarctic Glaciers Sheet resulted in mass migration and an entire reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the next People’s Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a older scholar presents a gripping and deeply troubling account of the way the children of the Enlightenment-the political and economic elites from the so-called advanced commercial societies-failed to do something, causing the collapse of Western civilization. Dramatizing research with techniques traditional non-fiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clearness amid the cacophony of climate-change books.