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how societies choose to fail or succeed

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  • 3.7 (33 ratings) ·
  • 198 Want to read
  • 10 Currently reading
  • 41 Have read

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Last edited by dcapillae
June 27, 2024 | History

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how societies choose to fail or succeed

  • 3.7 (33 ratings) ·
  • 198 Want to read
  • 10 Currently reading
  • 41 Have read

"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, 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 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 solutions to those same problems and persisted."--BOOK JACKET

Publish Date
Publisher
Viking
Language
English
Pages
575

Buy this book

Previews available in: French Russian English German

Edition Availability
Cover of: Effondrement
Cover of: Коллапс
Коллапс
2008, ACT, AST : AST MOSKVA
in Russian
Cover of: Collapse
Collapse
2008, Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: Collapse
Collapse
2006, Penguin Books
in English
Cover of: Collapse
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
2006, Penguin Books
in English
Cover of: Collapse
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
2005, Viking
Hardcover in English - First edition edition
Cover of: Kollaps
Kollaps: warum Gesellschaften überleben oder untergehen
2005, S. Fischer
in German
Cover of: Collapse
Collapse
2005, Viking
in English
Cover of: Collapse
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
2005, Viking
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Prologue :
A Tale of two farms. -- pt. 1:
Modern Montana.
Under Montana's big sky. -- pt. 2:
Past societies.
Twilight at Easter --
The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands --
The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors --
The Maya collapses --
The Viking prelude and fugues --
Norse Greenland's flowering --
Norse Greenland's end --
Opposite paths to success. -- pt. 3:
Modern societies.
Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide --
One island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti --
China, lurching giant --
"Mining" Australia. -- pt. 4:
Practical lessons.
Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? --
Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes --
The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today?

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [529]-560) and index.

Published in
New York
Genre
Case studies.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
304.28
Library of Congress
HN13 .D5 2005

The Physical Object

Pagination
xi, 575 p., [24] p. of plates :
Number of pages
575

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL15564492M
Internet Archive
collapsehowsociet00diam
ISBN 10
0670033375
LCCN
2004057152
OCLC/WorldCat
56367771
Wikidata
Q1069122
Goodreads
869574

Excerpts

A few summers ago I visited two dairy farms, Huls Farm and Gardar Farm, which despite being located thousands of miles apart were still remarkably similar in their strengths and vulnerabilities.
added anonymously.

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History

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June 27, 2024 Edited by dcapillae Edited without comment.
June 27, 2024 Edited by dcapillae merge authors
December 27, 2023 Edited by Singh Edited without comment.
April 19, 2023 Edited by Lisa //covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/12915198-S.jpg
October 25, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page