Review of COLLAPSE How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005) by Jared Diamond

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358786359_Diamond_2_a_ReviewEssay_on_COLLAPSE_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_2005_by_Jared_Diamond_C_H_J_Spencer_22Feb2022_6000_words_10_pages

This is a big book (560-pages), not quite as famous, as the author's better-known Pulitzer prize-winning non-fiction book (Guns, Germs and Steel) that successfully answered the question why Eurasian peoples conquered or displaced Native Americans (North and South), Australians and Africans. Now, the author tries to understand why some civilizations collapsed while others persist through similar challenges. His sub-title implies that humans are sometimes responsible for the results. The author connects his stories to troubling scenes from today: in Rwanda, China, Australia and Montana. He analyzes the mistakes that devastated Easter Island building impressive monuments to themselves while ignoring deforestation. Diamond's impressive science reclaims from past disasters, the lessons urgently needed similar meltdowns of our own civilization. There is a strong hint here that shows how our whole earth is now treating our environment the same way that many failed societies treated their own contexts in the past. Here, for the first time in history, humanity is faced with global ecological collapse. Diamond takes us on fascinating tour of past regional civilizations similarly threatened. Now, Collapse provides us with insights into how to avoid the grim fate of those past societies that failed to meet their environmental challenges.