Product Description

In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe—one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.

“Diamond’s most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don’t just educate and provoke, but entertain.” —The Seattle Times

“Extremely persuasive . . . replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics.” —The Boston Globe

“Extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in [its] ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past.” —The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #940 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Amazon.com Review
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.

Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling. --Jennifer Buckendorff

From Publishers Weekly
In the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond chronicled the rise of human civilizations since the Ice Age. This time, he turns over the log and probes the rotted side--the demise of once-productive societies such as the Maya, Easter Islanders and Greenland Norse. He also sounds the alarm on environmental practices undermining modern societies, including China, Russia, Australia and the United States. Narrator Murney has his work cut out for him, even though this audiobook is abridged. The narrative, which spans the globe and the ages, is dense, overwhelmingly so at times. Diamond parses myriad ecological, geographical and biological impacts, from weather patterns to deforestation to sperm count. But Murney rises to the occasion. His engagement never flags, and he strikes all the proper notes of concern and warning. The delivery feels effortless, his tone a blend of newsreel narrator and professor-at-the-lectern. Diamond teaches geography at UCLA, and his prose style, unsurprisingly, contains shades of the lecture hall. In fact, given such abundant and oft-alarming information, listeners may feel the urge to take notes for the final exam. Though grounding materials such as photographs and maps would have made this audiobook easier to follow, their absence is a minor fault in an overall fine production.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This powerful call to action should be read by all high school students. Diamond eloquently and persuasively describes the environmental and social problems that led to the collapse of previous civilizations and threaten us today. The book's organization makes researching particular regions or types of damage accessible. Unfamiliar words are defined, and mention of a place or issue that has been described in greater detail elsewhere includes relevant page numbers. Students may become impatient with the folksy Montana fishing stories in part one, but once the fascinating account of the vanished civilizations begins, readers are taken on an extraordinary journey. Using the Mayan empire, Easter Island, the Anasazi, and other examples, the author shows how a combination of environmental factors such as habitat destruction, the loss of biodiversity, and degradation of the soil caused complex, flourishing societies to suddenly disintegrate. Modern societies are divided into those that have begun to collapse, such as Rwanda and Haiti; those whose conservation policies have helped to avert disaster, such as Iceland and Japan; and those currently dealing with massive problems, such as Australia and China. Diamond is a cautious optimist. Some of his most compelling stories show how two groups of people sharing the same land, such as the Norse and Inuit in Greenland, can end up in completely different situations depending on how they address their problems. The solutions discussed are of vital importance: how societies respond to environmental degradation will determine how teens will live their adult lives. As Diamond points out, in a collapsing civilization, being rich just means being the last to starve. Black-and-white photos are included.–Kathy Tewell, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Good overview of the relationship between the environment & politics
This book makes an good and convincing case for the importance of environmental issues as they affect the well being of all societies developed and developing.

The book is centered around the collapse of past societies, although this is only one of four sections in the book. The first section concerns the environmental problems of Montana to give the reader a personal perspective of societies interaction with its environmental problems. The second section gives the book its title and Diamond goes into the collapse of several historical societies - the Maya, Easter Island, the Greenland Norse, and numerous other societies. One of Diamond's strengths is that he tries to end on a positive note and in the second section he examines historical societies that overcame environmental problems. The third section looks at modern societies facing environmental problems - Hati, Rwanda, Australia and others. Here the author looks at how the same problems that affected past societies are still relevant because they are affecting societies around us today. He also looks to strengthen the connection that he started in the first two sections between environmental problems and political problems. Diamond goes through great lengths to stress that he does not believe that one's fate is solely determined by the environment, but he makes a good case that a society cannot properly combat their political fate without understanding their environmental problems. The forth section is meant to make all of the lessons discussed in the previous chapters relevant to the readers of the book - mainly well-off, first world citizens. He looks at the obstacles to confronting environmental problems and how to best influence companies and societies.

Throughout the book I think Diamond makes a good effort to maintain a balance view and to legitimately understand and address the complaints that many people raise to environmentalist agendas. While I do not consider this to be an overarching book on the world's problems and how to solve them, it would be a good addition to the reading list of anyone who wants to understand the relationship of environmental and political problems and some steps that can be taken to solve them.

Warms up after the first couple chapters
Not quite as good as his best-known book, "Guns, Germs and Steel", mostly because the first 50 pages are about Montana. Who cares about Montana? I barely even know where it is. But after that it gets wicked awesome. Unfortunately you can't really skip the Montana parts - too many concepts are introduced that you'll need later - but hey, it's Diamond; you can suck it up for 50 pages. Vikings come later. Vikings!

Obvious pluses and not so obvious minuses
Jared Diamond has a gift for explaining complex phenomena to the average person in a way that is captivating and digestible. In this book, he tackles a topic (the collapse of societies) that is depressing to some and terrifying to others (I suppose it is infuriating to those who just want to be free to build a mine with no environmental protection). He manages to keep the reader's attention for over five hundred pages and leave us with hope for the future -- if we can learn the lessons of the past. He is well read and there is a lot of research behind the book. These are the chief positives. I read the book and was quite taken by it.

The negatives take a bit more time to appreciate. Although Diamond creates a fairly consistent picture that supports his five point framework, it seems that there are other versions of some of the stories (e.g., the fate of the Greenland Norse) that may not fit it so well. Also, if you abstract the five point framework you get something like this: there are five factors that lead to societal collapse (self inflicted environmental damage, climate change, the presence of hostile neighbors, the absence of trading partners and finally the efficacy of societies response to the previously mentioned four factors), not all apply in all cases and of course there are other factors (not featured) that sometimes apply. At that point one is tempted to ask, why is five a magic number? I believe the answer is because those are the factors that Diamond wants to talk about -- or because those are the five that the average person wants to hear about. They fit my agenda so I initially accepted them at face value. It was not until I was challenged to think of other factors that lead to societal collapse that the five point framework started to collapse for me (e.g., didn't Jared Diamond write a Pulitzer Prize winning book called " Guns, GERMS and Steel" that talks about the devastating effects that pestilence had on the indigenous cultures of the New World?) . If the five point framework has value, it is as a literary device, not a scientific theory. If taken seriously, it is the kind of framework that finds its way into orthodoxy and creates barriers for further investigation. To me this is a fairly big minus.

Some may say I analyze too much: I should just read and enjoy. But isn't that, after all, the point of scientific inquiry? Isn't that supposed to be the basis for such a book?