Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed | 
 enlarge | Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  393 reviews
Sales Rank: 1088
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 592
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0143036556
Dewey Decimal Number: 304.28
EAN: 9780143036555
ASIN: 0143036556
Publication Date: December 27, 2005
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Condition: Softcover. Sound & nice copy, light to moderate rubbing/edgewear to wraps.
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Amazon.com
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
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 catastropheone 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.
Diamonds most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that dont 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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 388 more reviews...
 Not starling but fair July 15, 2008
In Collapse, Jared Diamond utilizes what is on the surface a sound scientific approach to the problems of societies and their eventual collapse. Unfortunately, the focus of this topic is visibly narrow. For his "prehistoric" examples he used 1,000 year old societies, in addition to more recent ones, and found what he believed to be that all societies were basically inharmonious realities forever striving to coexist with the natural world. Fair enough, but this goes somewhat against common sense. There are certainly examples of simple cultures living relatively harmoniously with nature, even today in South America, despite modern encroachment. Unfortunately, Diamond uses the lens of western civilization to examine the failure of civilization and in the end that is the book's overall failure. Truth be told, the greatest underlying cause of collapse is civilization itself - the blood thirsty, energy hungry entity that continually seeks more until it is finally done. The fact is it is apparent that the agricultural revolution changed the landscape of the world deeply. While there are differing reasons for social collapses, both macro and micro, it is only those where great accumulation is characteristic that these societies were able to severely alter their own habitats to the point where things like sudden die-off or collapse occurred with predictable frequency. In examining human cultures, we must look closely to all parts of human history and not merely that which dates to the written tablet or page. Even before this point we see a rich landscape of human activity whose economies and lifestyles are all too commonly misunderstood or left out. Where this book excels is at explaining the technical process of societies failing and lacks in finding answers, while a more expansive critique is left wanting. As writers and anthropologists we should not leave important parts of human history simply out of focus, yet this is one of the major sins of the western world.
Another good Diamond take July 3, 2008
Jared Diamond's at it again, providing a comprehensive view of the real root causes and conditions that have brought past civilizations to an end and what we can learn from them today. Though he delves on pre-set circumstances to help determine an outcome of society, he still leaves room for human variables and conscious decisions as we are capable of making. In fact, he not only leaves room for it but insists on its importance when he says from all his background and experience that he is "cautiously optimistic" about mankind's future prospects, depending on how we plan and react to those pre-set circumstances in the future... A decision which we ultimately face and continue to face.
The book can be quite dry at times as it is not a story but an anthropology, yet stick with it as I believe it changed my way of viewing the world and how important our relationship to Earth is.
 Great book June 9, 2008
I read Guns, Germs, and Steel and was so impressed that I bought Collapse. Although it is slightly less engrossing (perhaps because it is about a less uplifting topic), it is still an amazing book.
 Interesting, but hardly conclusive May 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Diamond's books are always filled with interesting facts and thought provoking theories about ancient societies. But while I enjoy reading his books, I find his conclusions are often undeveloped.
Although Diamond makes an effort to distance himself from environmental determinism, his writings can often be classified as just that. A typical example can be found in the last chapter, when he notes that the countries with the greatest environmental problems are the same countries with the greatest political problems, concluding that lack of environmental awareness leads to social upheaval. But when evaluating any correlation, the researcher must be aware of directionality (does A cause B or does B cause A?) and a potential third variable (are A and B caused by C?). Only one explanation is considered.
More generally speaking, Diamond seems to pick and choose his examples to fit his theories. I find it very suspicious that in a book that examines the failures of past societies, he neglects to include the ancient Romans!
I'm also annoyed that with such a voluminous collection of statistics, he never uses footnotes. When an author makes the claim that we must solve all of 12 environmental problems within the next 50 years or the world will be doomed to some level of disaster, I want ample citations. I recommend any of Diamond's readers to take a look at Bjorn Lomborg's, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," and see how a researcher should cite his sources. (And, interestingly, how much more optimistic Lomborg is about the state of the world.)
Not quite up to par... May 26, 2008
I absolutely loved GGS and highly respect Dr. Diamond as a professor, a writer, and a scientist. However, this book failed to thrill me in the way GGS did. Its wandering, highly anecdotal and verbally confounding chapters left out more detail than they were intended to include and lose the reader in twisted rhetoric and "smart" sounding verbage that really, to the trained scientific eye, is incredibly frustrating and tedious. Dr. Diamond picked some of the most fascinating societies to explore, and gives the reader an intro to each, but I think with some revisions and editing to his journal-like writing style, at least twice as much information could have been included, much in the way GGS was incredible dense, but equally informative. I hate to say it, but I really was at times bored with this book, and wish I hadn't bought it new. GGS remains on my top shelf, where I can access it almost daily, but this one I have a feeling will end up as either kindling or a gift to a less critical friend...
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