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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Customer Reviews:
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Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0 
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Compelling Reading for Concerned Residents of Planet Earth 
Human history is full of tantalizing riddles. Some of the most fascinating of these arise from the appearance of ancient ruins in unlikely places, such as Easter Island, or the dense jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula. To the uninitiated, these ruins are the ghosts of phantom civilizations whose disappearance is a mystery to our 21st Century minds. But like geologists reading Earth's history in the rocks, archaeologists can often read the history of past civilizations by studying the records of these... more info
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Thorough, significant, and relevant anthropology
The only unfortunate aspect of Diamond's comparative history is that it too often gets confused with the work of James Kunstler because both wrote books that appeal to readers interested in climate change. The difference is that Diamond is an actual geographer while Kunstler is just a lunatic. Collapse uses an anthropological framework to analyze extinct societies in terms of their relationship to the environment, including an extensive discussion of modern societies in varying degrees of social collapse... more info
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A Compelling But Imperfect Look Into Environmental Reasons For Collapse And What It Means For Our World
First, let me say the real score I'd want to give this book is a 3.5 or 3.75.
First, on a more superficial level, it could have used another round or two of editing. There are multiple occasions where he hammers home the same point multiple times for the same culture, particularly in Chapters 6-8 dealing with the Greenland Norse. This book could have been slimmer by a solid 40-50 pages without losing much.
Also, he rarely cites his sources directly in the text, often just referring to researcher... more info
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Read this book.
This comprehensive look at humanity's impact on our environments (past and present) is a critical read for everyone alive today. I found it so important that I bought five copies and sent them to family and friends.
The first chapter is pretty slow--though I've been contradicted on this--but from there on the book really takes off, so stick with it. Lovers of history will thoroughly enjoy the sections on past societies, and anyone concerned with or curious about the global environmental challenges we... more info
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