Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin Press Science) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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 -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Defining collapse as "extreme decline," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), which posed questions about Western civilization's domination of much of the world, now examines the reverse side of that coin. Diamond ponders reasons why certain civilizations have collapsed. With an eye on the implications for the present and future, he bases his analysis on his newly phrased version of an old maxim about what history teaches: "The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn." Drawing examples from this database, from Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the Viking outposts in Greenland to the Mayan civilization in Central America, the author finds "the fundamental pattern of catastrophe" that is apparent in these populations that once flourished and then collapsed. The template he holds up is a construct based on five factors, including environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbors. In addition, Diamond casts his critical but acute and inclusive gaze on the issue of why civilizations fail to see collapse coming. A thought-provoking book containing not a single page of dense prose. Expect demand from civic- and history-minded readers. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Adult/High School–This powerful call to action should be read by all high school students. Diamond eloquently and persuasively describes the environmental and social problems that led to the collapse of previous civilizations and threaten us today. The book's organization makes researching particular regions or types of damage accessible. Unfamiliar words are defined, and mention of a place or issue that has been described in greater detail elsewhere includes relevant page numbers. Students may become impatient with the folksy Montana fishing stories in part one, but once the fascinating account of the vanished civilizations begins, readers are taken on an extraordinary journey. Using the Mayan empire, Easter Island, the Anasazi, and other examples, the author shows how a combination of environmental factors such as habitat destruction, the loss of biodiversity, and degradation of the soil caused complex, flourishing societies to suddenly disintegrate. Modern societies are divided into those that have begun to collapse, such as Rwanda and Haiti; those whose conservation policies have helped to avert disaster, such as Iceland and Japan; and those currently dealing with massive problems, such as Australia and China. Diamond is a cautious optimist. Some of his most compelling stories show how two groups of people sharing the same land, such as the Norse and Inuit in Greenland, can end up in completely different situations depending on how they address their problems. The solutions discussed are of vital importance: how societies respond to environmental degradation will determine how teens will live their adult lives. As Diamond points out, in a collapsing civilization, being rich just means being the last to starve. Black-and-white photos are included.–Kathy Tewell, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From groundbreaking writer and thinker Jared Diamond comes an epic, visionary new book on the mysterious collapse of past civilizations - and what this means for our future. Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Collapse also shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.

From groundbreaking writer and thinker, Jared Diamond comes an epic, visionary new book on the mysterious collapse of past civilizations - and what this means for our future. Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, "Collapse" also shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.

Jared Diamond is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until recently he was Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, which also is the winner of Britain's 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.