Collapse

By: Jared Diamond

Narrated by: Christopher Murney

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization.

Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Collapse moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society’s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?©2004 Jared Diamond; (P)2004 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Mr. Diamond...is a lucid writer with an ability to make arcane scientific concepts readiily accesible to the lay reader, and his case studies of failed cultures are never less than compelling." The New York Times

"...Collapse is a magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm." Businessweek

"Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation. They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care." Gregg Easterbrook, The New York Times Book Review

For us all

Riveting, scary, hopeful worldview. Insightful investigations into histories/mysteries of Easter Island, Greenland?ground up and top down perspectives.

The Best Book I Ever Hated To Hear!

I read Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and love his great economy with words and his ability to synthesize and summarize extensive, complicated subjects into a work that is understandable and interesting.

Jared accomplishes a similar task in "Collapse." I found myself looking forward to long walks in the park because I would be able to listen attentively to the audio book while I exercised.

I found the content alarming on many levels. But the information contained in "Collapse" is something that anybody who wants to claim to be a responsible citizen needs to hear.

"Collapse" is the best book I ever hated to hear.

It's so profound that I bought the hardcover too!

Mr. Diamond weaves history and human nature together to give us a vision of what will happen to our society and how we can affect it.

I found his evidence compelling enough that I'm re-thinking many of my long held positions. When a book causes me to ponder like that, I consider it an excellent investment.

Great Book

A well-researched and eye-opening book that I think makes fair arguments and puts forth a bold hypothesis. Something of revisionist history but all grounded in facts. A strong book about environmental impact and how people and culture think generally and never see the catastrophe coming. Pertinent and would be interesting even if one does not believe in global warming. The opening about Montana was devastating to that state. I'd have thought he had a vendetta against Montana, but again, it was all just plain researched facts about their economy and how the state is run. It has been awhile so I do not remember every chapter, but I know it touched on the Mayans and I remember finding the Easter Island chapter a highlight. The book is well-narrated though the actor's voice is so deep and unique it takes some getting used to. The type of voice used on 15 second promos for bloody made-for-TV dramas is maybe not the best for a longer work, but he does a good job and eventually anything is normal, even an ice cold swimming pool, you know?

He does it again!!!

Every American should read this book. I think it could spark great debate, no matter which side of the issue you are on. That is what this country needs, good old fashioned debate on what we want our country to stand for, where we should head and how to get there. This is not a political book but a survival guide for future minded civilizations and societies.

If you want to pick up or listen to a book that says everything is rosy, fiction, then this might not be your book. If you want a great research book on why societies have not lasted and what might be some of the lessons, this is definitely your book. "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", this at a time when the schools are getting rid of history classes to make the grade in other subjects.

Guns, Germs and Steel is his previous book and is an awesome read also.