Collapse

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Hardcover, 592 pages

English language

Published Dec. 29, 2004 by Viking Adult.

ISBN:
978-0-670-03337-9
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OCLC Number:
56367771

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4 stars (3 reviews)

"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and when we reproduce too fast or cut down too …

22 editions

Review of 'Collapse' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

You probably know the author from his masterpiece Guns, Germs and Steel. If you do, you know what to expect from this book. The same thorough explanations, the vast array of interconnected factors, all grounded on scientific data.

This is not the book for those who truly want an optimistic view of what the future holds for us. The title says it all: collapse. So the author guides us through many paradigmatic collapses of civilizations that acted either greedy, naively, or simply recklessly.

11 years from its publication and the rate of global destruction has not halted — in fact, it is accelerating, as predicted by those who are often called pessimists. So, in a sense, Jared Diamond’s call to action to make the change happen has not come to fruition. However, if you happen to read this book, you’ll probably become one amongst many contributing to at …

Subjects

  • Social Science
  • Sociology
  • Public Policy - Environmental Policy
  • General
  • History - General History
  • Social history
  • Social conditions
  • Social Change
  • Civilization
  • Historical Geography
  • World - General
  • History / Social History
  • Environmental Policy
  • Case studies