Title: Collapse
Subtitle: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
First published: December 2004
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
Subjects: Sociology, Culturen, Environnement, Changement social, Verval (geschiedenis), Environment, Historia social, Social Conditions, Nature, Effect of human beings on, Case studies, Hombre, Politique gouvernementale, Histoire sociale, Cas, Études de, Análisis de casos, Social history, Social change, Milieufactoren, Política ambiental, History, Ecología humana, Influencia sobre la naturaleza, Cambio social, Civilization, Nonfiction, Environmental policy, Human ecology, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Politique de l'environnement, Gesellschaft, Civilisations, Estudio de casos, Niedergang, Etudes de cas, Reading Level-Grade 9, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, Études de cas, Civilisation, Philosophie, Effets de l'homme, Écologie humaine, Évolution, Théorie, Société (milieu humain), Culture, Disparition, Environmental degradation, Civilization, history, Klimaänderung, Umweltschaden, Natürliche Ressourcen, Raubbau, Untergang, Zivilisation, Volk, Geschichte, Umweltkrise, Weltproblematik, Nature, effect of human beings on, Social & Cultural History, Anthropology, Société, Ecologie humaine, Développement économique et social, Histoire, Futur, World history
Time periods: Geschichte