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Loading... Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (2005)by Jared Diamond
Work InformationCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond (2005)
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My wife recommended this read to me ! I am not disappointed - impressive and believed to be true ! In the past, human societies probably disappeared because they destroyed their natural environment by exploiting its resources beyond what it could support. Let us meditate on their fate so as not to repeat their mistakes. This allegory by Jared Diamond has a universal scope and sums up the current collapse quite well...
Taken together, ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' and ''Collapse'' represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation. They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care. All of which makes the two books exasperating, because both come to conclusions that are probably wrong. Mr. Diamond -- who has academic training in physiology, geography and evolutionary biology -- is a lucid writer with an ability to make arcane scientific concepts readily accessible to the lay reader, and his case studies of failed cultures are never less than compelling. Human behaviour towards the ecosphere has become dysfunctional and now arguably threatens our own long-term security. The real problem is that the modern world remains in the sway of a dangerously illusory cultural myth. Like Lomborg, most governments and international agencies seem to believe that the human enterprise is somehow 'decoupling' from the environment, and so is poised for unlimited expansion. Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse, confronts this contradiction head-on. It is essential reading for anyone who is unafraid to be disillusioned if it means they can walk into the future with their eyes open. Diamond is at pains to stress the objectivity he has brought to bear on a sequence of collapse scenarios that often continue to generate serious controversy, and for the most part (until the final chapter) leaves it up to the reader to draw down any conclusions from these scenarios that may be relevant to our own societies today. Belongs to SeriesBelongs to Publisher SeriesFischer Taschenbuch (16730) Gallimard, Folio essais (513) Has the adaptationAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (27)What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture of 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 pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals or environment gives us. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)304.28Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Factors affecting social behavior Human ecologyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Penguin AustraliaAn edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia. |
It is a must read but then also one must seek critical reviews as in many areas this book suggests a more idealist pessimistic view of sustainable civilisation than the other many historical examples that counter this. ( )