Collapse
Subtitle: how societies choose to fail or succeed
By: Jared Diamond.
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 575
Subjects: Social history -- Case studies; Social change -- Case studies; Environmental policy -- Case studies
Genres: Case studies.
Description: "In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 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, 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 historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and when we reproduce too fast or cut down too many trees. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, unstable trade partners, and pressure from enemies were all factors in the demise of the doomed societies, but other societies found solutions to those same problems and persisted."--BOOK JACKET
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [529]-560) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue :; title: A Tale of two farms. -- pt. 1:; title: Modern Montana.; title: Under Montana's big sky. -- pt. 2:; title: Past societies.; title: Twilight at Easter --; title: The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands --; title: The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors --; title: The Maya collapses --; title: The Viking prelude and fugues --; title: Norse Greenland's flowering --; title: Norse Greenland's end --; title: Opposite paths to success. -- pt. 3:; title: Modern societies.; title: Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide --; title: One island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti --; title: China, lurching giant --; title: "Mining" Australia. -- pt. 4:; title: Practical lessons.; title: Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? --; title: Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes --; title: The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today?