[1] The text's principal concern is why economic imbalances have historically caused civil collapse, and asks whether The United States could experience a similar decline.

[2] The book summarizes the fall of a range of civilizations, including the Ming Dynasty, Ottoman Turkey and Imperial Spain, and reflects on the resulting patterns within their socioeconomic, military and political policies.

The text is particularly critical of heavy regulation on internal employment, markets and trade, highlighting the limits of the Japanese model of growth, including an ageing population.

The book concludes with a comparison of the twenty-first century United States to former fallen civilizations, and the challenges Americans face in order to address what Kane and Hubbard regard as "dysfunctional fiscal imbalance".

[5] The Financial Times described the book as "a readable, data-rich history of the fall of great powers through the eyes of two fiscally troubled US conservatives in 2013.