In Jared Diamond's follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns,
Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population
explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse
of civilization. Diamond is also the author of Upheaval: Turning Points
for Nations in Crisis
Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population
growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of
societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As
in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of
catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a
series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Collapse moves
from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing
American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the
doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems face us today and
have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and
Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own
society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power,
ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust
areas like Montana.
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is
destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time,
raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing
ecological suicide?
