I recently completed Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive” and I highly recommend it. His earlier work, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is a great book and this is merely very good. Still, this is the book that Hugo Chavez should have held up and urged everyone to read. If he had, he would be somewhat less of a clown and the world would be a slightly better place.
Diamond surveys a number of past societies that have collapsed (e.g., Easter Island, the Anasazi, the Mayan empire, the Norse in Greenland), looks for common factors behind their demise, finds them (including deforestation and other environmental damage, pig-headed leadership, failure to adapt a society’s values to changing conditions, conflict with other societies, etc.). He then surveys the contemporary world and finds lots of these same factors (usually much worse than in the ancient societies). It’s a chilling warning as to what we could face if we don’t get our act together and soon. Diamond himself is cautiously optimistic that we can avert collapse.
Everyone should read this book.
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