Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Jared M. Diamond (Author)
Who hasn't gazed upon the abandoned temples of Angkor Wat or the jungle-choked cities of the Maya and wondered, could the same fate happen to us? In this riveting book, Jared Diamond--whose Guns, Germs, and Steel revolutionized our understanding of history--explores how humankind's use and abuse of the environment reveal the truth behind the world's great collapses, from the Anasazi of North America to the Vikings of Greenland to modern Montana. What emerges is a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe--one whose warning signs surround us today and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances and a vast historical perspective into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.--From publisher description
Case studies
1 online resource (xii, 589 pages) : illustrations, maps
9781101501962, 9781101502006, 9780141976969, 1101501960, 1101502002, 0141976969
748370928
Prologue: A tale of two farms
Under Montana's big sky
Twilight at Easter
The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands
The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors
The Maya collapses
The Viking prelude and fugues
Norse Greenland's flowering
Norse Greenland's end
Opposite paths to success
Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide
One island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti
China, lurching giant
"Mining" Australia
Why do some societies make disastrous decisions?
Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes
The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today?
Afterword: Angkor's rise and fall
"With a new afterword"--Cover