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Loading... Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)by Jared M. Diamond
  
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  ) sfj2 | Nov 25, 2023 |   ) jaylcee | Nov 13, 2023 | Next, he went on to illustrate the cases of eight or ten people's whose civilizations collapsed. My problem with the book, is that he has chosen places that are remote and are ecologically fragile. He examined why the Vikings in Greenland died out, but not why the Vikings in Shetland survive. Neither has he written about a civilization in an ecologically stable place that has collapsed. To me, this is a weakness of the book. ( ) RajivC | Mar 21, 2023 | ) Castinet | Dec 11, 2022 |  ) Fortunesdearest | Oct 23, 2022 |
 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 adaptation
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Penguin AustraliaAn edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.
AUGUST - SPOILERS - Collapse
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