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Jared Diamond

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Paperback – 27 December 2005

by Jared Diamond (Author)

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A study of the downfall of some of history's greatest civilizations, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, includes coverage of such cultures as the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Viking colony on Greenland, tracing patterns of environmental damage, climate change, poor political choices, and other factors that were pivotal to their demise. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

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Product details

Publisher : Penguin USA (P); Reprint edition (27 December 2005)
Language : English
Paperback : 575 pages
ISBN-10 : 0143036556
ISBN-13 : 978-0143036555
Dimensions : 14.22 x 2.79 x 21.59 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 250,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 172 in Public Affairs & Administration (Books)
- 475 in Environmental Policy
- 13,165 in World History (Books)

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Libras

How Empires Fail

Reviewed in Australia on 10 January 2020

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Over view of several societies and there failure to come to grips with past climate change. Can tend to go on a bit. Speed read a few parts. Like the chapter on what an individual can do to influence companies to change. Felt this could of been a book in its own right.

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Expat

I won't add to what other reviewers have already said ...

Reviewed in Australia on 1 August 2018

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I won't add to what other reviewers have already said so well. I know a lot about history and the civilisations discussed, but even I found new insights.

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Kindle Customer

Compelling analysis that holds weight 20 years on

Reviewed in Australia on 21 December 2020

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Excellent read. Complex topic, well structured, concisely delivered all while being an entertaining read. Thoroughly recommend this longitudinal reflection on the human condition.

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Kindle Customer

Fascinating

Reviewed in Australia on 15 May 2019

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Great insight into the collapse of historical societies with many relevant lessons for the modern world.

Very entertaining and thoughtful

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Insightful

Reviewed in Australia on 15 June 2020

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Very insightful for understanding our planet. Highly recommended LD

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 21 February 2016

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This book should change the behavior of societies but probably won't.

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Andrew Ravensdale

Middle of the Road

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 November 2017

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Jared Diamond is a scientist and academic. He has also been a senior official in the environmental movement. Diamond is a trained biologist who became an ornithographer and finally a geographer. He has been US regional director of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Collapse is based on science, but not on Diamond’s original research. Like some of Diamond’s other popular books, such as Guns, Germs and Steel, it is a form of intelligent popularisation; what the French sometimes call haute vulgarisation.
Collapse is one of the popular classics of environmentalism. It should perhaps be read in conjunction Tainter’s remorselessly logical The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Diamond is an optimist. He accepts completely that environmental issues are ‘serious and in need of addressing’. He does not however think that human extinction or an apocalyptic collapse of human civilisation is likely. He sees the future, if we do not address the problems we are facing, as one of ‘significantly lower living standards, chronically higher risks, and the undermining of what we now consider some of our key values’. Bad enough.
Collapse is based on case studies. That is both its strength and – as I shall point out in my conclusion to this review – its weakness.
Some of the case studies are of countries or regions that Diamond knows well. He has for instance known the Bitterroot Valley of Montana since childhood. He has spent much time in the forests of New Guinea watching birds and knows Australia well. He has tramped the Norse archaeological sites in Greenland, and has visited Iceland and Easter Island. In all cases he has made himself thoroughly familiar with the literature. Rather than cluttering the text with footnotes, Diamond has provided a detailed list of further reading at the end of the book. It is what the French call a bibliographie raisonnée.
From this brief and partial list it will be clear that not all the societies which Diamond deals with have in fact collapsed to date. Diamond includes a number of well-known classic cases of collapse from the past. I have mentioned Easter Island and Norse Greenland. The latter is a case which obviously fascinates Diamond, and he devotes a great deal of space to it. He also deals with the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the lowland Maya of the Classic period, and two modern examples of societies which have not been allowed to collapse: Ruanda, where a Tutsi-led rebel army prevented a final meltdown, and Haiti, where the United Nations intervened.
Australia, of course, has not collapsed and neither has China, another of Diamond’s cases. They both however face severe challenges. Diamond also deals with two examples of societies, Tokugawa Japan and the Pacific island of Tikopia, which dealt successfully with environmental challenges.
Diamond does not believe that any society collapses solely for environmental reasons. Diamond believes, I think absolutely reasonably, that ‘A society’s responses [to its environmental problems] depend on its political, economic and social institutions and on its cultural values’. Diamond gives a particularly interesting example of the Greenland Norse, whose collective self-identification as European Christians prevented them from ‘becoming Inuit’, their best chance of survival.
The book is rich in detail. Although I read it several years ago, I had forgotten quite a lot. I had forgotten, for example, that Iceland – because of the application by the original Norse settlers of European farming techniques to light volcanic soils – has the most degraded environment in Europe. I had also forgotten in how many cases – the Anasazi, the Maya, Easter, Pitcairn and Henderson islands in the Pacific – cannibalism can play a role in collapse. In both cases the facts don’t fit my prejudices. That is something I think for me to bear in mind when I am dealing with this kind of material.
Diamond’s treatment of his cases is very full. It is much fuller, for example, than the newspaper or magazine features from which most of us get our information. One of the results of this detailed treatment is to help us realise just how environmentally challenged a modern society that is apparently functioning perfectly well can be. In Montana, for example, the traditional, environmentally damaging industries have declined. They have however left a legacy, which can be very expensive. There are twenty thousand abandoned mines, for example, which have left toxic wastes and in many cases have contaminated the water table. In many case there are no surviving owners, which leaves the state and the federal government arguing about who should pay the very heavy costs of clear-up.
Another example of a challenged society which most of us would think is healthy is Australia, where an over-commitment to English cultural models led to serious environmental degradation caused in particular by sheep-raising. Diamond details the decline of the towns, the flight to the cities and the costs of maintaining an uneconomical agricultural sector.
Diamond’s analysis is also capable of correcting misapprehensions about the collapse of some societies. In the case of Ruanda, for example, Diamond challenges the common Western prejudice that the massacres were a direct and simple result of ethnic tension. He shows that the tensions were to a large extent the legacy of interference by Belgium, the colonial power, and manipulation by various groups of politicians. More importantly, he shows that before the massacres over-population had led to an excessive subdivision of farms leading to non-viable land holdings and a breakdown of community in rural areas.
Two of Diamond’s most interesting cases are Tokugawa Japan and the island of Tikopia. In Japan the Shoguns realised the dangers of deforestation, and set up an elaborate range of measures to combat it. These were successful. On Tikopia the islanders realised the environmental threat. They killed all their pigs, and took measures – some of them drastic, by our standards - to prevent the population rising beyond a viable level.
One solution was top-down, the other was bottom-up, which is the point Diamond wants to illustrate. It is also interesting that neither society was advanced, in our sense, or industrial.
Diamond’s approach makes it clear that the causes of collapse or of an environmental threat are specific, and that many threats have to be dealt with locally, in their context. He shows, with a suitably guarded optimism, that it can be done.
Where Diamond’s approach is weaker is in dealing with global threats: climate disruption, the pollution of the oceans, the loss of the rainforests, the wetlands and the coral reefs, the disappearance of topsoil, the pollution of freshwater. The technical solutions are well understood. What is difficult is the need for international cooperation.
I do not think we are very good at that.

41 people found this helpful

Honey Badger

Just read it!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 April 2019

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This is an important book. Although written in the 1970s (I think), it still holds good today. Very easy reading despite its subject matter, full of really interesting and often surprising information,. The examples of the problems posed by location and environment on societies and how different patterns of behaviour or circumstances can affect that society's chances of success or survival will undoubtedly evoke comparisons with modern-day societies. The environmental message certainly comes across loud and clear, and includes warnings that are relevant to us and future generations that we really can't afford to ignore.

3 people found this helpful

Graffico

Really good read especially during these times 😃👍

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2020

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This book is in my opinion total excellence you can really see a trend and how certain patterns fall when Societies collapse.

Rich Dad Poor Dad author recommended I read this book and I am glad I did as America is slowly collapsing.

This book will give the reader a historical and detailed breakdown as to how societies collapse.

Its only one slight hindrance is that it does not focus on what is going on at present I feel thats because of when the book was published.

One person found this helpful

Daniela. G.

This is the shocking truth that more people should know

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 April 2013

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I must admit that this was very uncomfortable reading and the more I read the worse I felt. Diamond identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues. Add to this the dramatic problem of overpopulation (as in Easter Island) and the result is impending disaster.

What I found most intriguing is part two (of four) dedicated to the description of how some past societes collapsed. Some of these descriptions are heart-breaking, especially when Diamon goes into details and mentions the discovery of the skeletons of some last survivers who dies of starvation afetr having destroyed their own habitat. Part four tries to gives some hope, but after hours of gloomy reading I must confess it did little to improve my mood.

Still, this should be compulsory reading. Definitely recommended.

11 people found this helpful

Maggie W

Worth reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 July 2019

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It’s is one of those books that its content stays with you for years. I really enjoyed it and definitely would recommend reading it.
I bought it in used condition that came on time and as described.

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