Collapse
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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Narrated by:
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Michael Prichard
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By:
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Jared Diamond
About this listen
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?
©2014 Jared Diamond (P)2014 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mike Davis on Audible!
- By Nathan D. Backlund on 09-02-17
By: Mike Davis
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Dark Emu
- Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?
- By: Bruce Pascoe
- Narrated by: Bruce Pascoe
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been understated in modern retellings of Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the best books ever!!!!
- By Anonymous User on 05-07-18
By: Bruce Pascoe
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Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 864
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 719
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 714
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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World without Women
- By Anonymous User on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 378
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 185
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Story4 out of 5 stars 191
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Anonymous User on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
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The Soil Will Save Us
- How Scientists, Farmers, and Ranchers Are Tending the Soil to Reverse Global Warming
- By: Kristin Ohlson
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 678
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 600
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 594
In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Rambling, mile wide, inch deep treatment of a subject
- By Anonymous User on 10-17-18
By: Kristin Ohlson
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Nature's Metropolis
- Chicago and the Great West
- By: William Cronon
- Narrated by: Jonah Cummings
- Length: 18 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 147
In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Moving
- By Anonymous User on 02-09-18
By: William Cronon
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1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,741
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,218
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,204
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
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Trees in Paradise
- A California History
- By: Jared Farmer
- Narrated by: Kevin Scollin
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities.
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5 out of 5 stars
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lovely audiobook
- By Anonymous User on 08-02-22
By: Jared Farmer
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Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 244
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4 out of 5 stars 214
Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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Let There Be Water
- Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World
- By: Seth M. Siegel
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 154
Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also has an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors - the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan - every day.
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3 out of 5 stars
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More water politics story than water technology
- By normal person on 04-12-21
By: Seth M. Siegel
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Pandora's Seed
- The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
- By: Spencer Wells
- Narrated by: Spencer Wells
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 169
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 69
This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Short and unfocused, but often quite interesting.
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-10
By: Spencer Wells
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The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MUST READ!
- By Anonymous User on 11-28-17
By: Callum Roberts
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The Nature of Nature
- Why We Need the Wild
- By: Enric Sala
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story5 out of 5 stars 61
In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Anonymous User on 11-21-24
By: Enric Sala
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Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Errors
- By Anonymous User on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
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Indian Givers
- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 437
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 349
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 351
After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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All things Jack Weatherford
- By Robert on 06-03-10
By: Jack Weatherford
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