What is one of the best ways to predict the future? Winston Churchill believed that the further back you can look, the further forward you are likely to be able to see. This intriguing book looks back two thousand years to the Roman Empire to help us to see into our own future. Pugnare tells the story of a people who focussed on growth and profit as the most important outcomes. They neglected however the stability of the system as a whole and overlooked the bad decision making of those in charge. It tells the story of their success, a prosperity that the world had never seen before. And it tells the story of their failure, the one thousand five hundred year long Great Stagnation that followed the self-induced collapse of their world.