Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed

New York, New York, U.S.A.: Penguin Group - Viking Studio Books, 2005. First Printing . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. Ward, Jeffrey - Maps. 575 Pages Indexed. Light grey boards with black quarter-spine. Top front corner is lightly barely noticeable bumped. No other defects noted to this otherwise As New book with flawless interior text pages. What is more haunting than the specter of a civilization's collapse such as the abandoned temples of Angkor Wat, the Maya cities overgrown by jungle, or the somber vigil of Easter Island's statues? Who hasn't looked at such ruins and wondered, could the same thing happen to us? In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, the author examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. 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 fascinating 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 solution to those same problems and persisted. What makes one environment more fragile than another? Why do some societies, but not others, blunder into self-destruction? 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. What economic, social and political choices can we still make so that we don't meet the same ends? Huge in scope, clear and passionate in style, this book 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 destroying itself? Contents in Four Parts: Modern Montana, Past Societies, Modern Societies, and Practical Lessons.