Our webmaster has done a super nice job of taking my pdf and building a table of contents, which is still beyond this writer's tech ceiling.

Undertaken was written in part as Conspiracy Against Mankind for this site, with the main draft, assembled from threads published on Substack, titled Enemy of All Mankind. That title was drawn from Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Yet i found it used to title a book on piracy. I thought this was ironic, as the term used by Defoe about the most notorious pyrates was The Common Enemy of All Mankind. This is the same indictment cast by Gibbon, 50 years later, at the most ruthless Roman Imperators.

Yet, my 14-month rereading of mostly ancient sources in search of a malevolent thread, seeking some clue as to the hand that draws the curtain across the stage of history, pointed to some great enemy to us all that did not rampage outside the system, or sit upon the various thrones of rule, but worked more intelligently in dedication to our continued demise.

I like the cover graphic and the thumbnail equally.