Somewhat offtopic but I've found reading Gwendolyn Leick's comprehensive history of Mesopotamia (~4000BC->1000AD) and it's really helped me understand how civil

Somewhat offtopic but I've found reading Gwendolyn Leick's comprehensive history of Mesopotamia (~4000BC->1000AD) and it's really helped me understand how civilizations --- successful ones, at least --- consent to ebb and flow. There have been, in history, periods of hundreds of years where the tide went out on civ. Because their civilizations were more-or-less designed for this, it was ok. Whole cities were abandoned when rivers changed their courses over hundreds (or in some cases, dozens) of years. And this was painful, but it was also ok. Our civ is not nearly as well-engineered as all that, however. We got so obsessed with planet-scale development we forgot century-scale development. Fast and brittle, like driving a Ferrari offroad.