Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jared DiamondEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2005-12-27
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 592
Book Reviews of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Book Review: Not starling but fair
Summary: 2 Stars
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.
Summary of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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
In his million-copy 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 in this brilliant companion volume, 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 fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving 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, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. 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?
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