In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores  how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the  conditions for the collapse of civilization


Environmental damage, climate change, globalization,  rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the  demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As  in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond  traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing  global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives.  Collapse moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing  American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed  Viking colony on Greenland. 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.


Brilliant,  illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse 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 committing ecological suicide?

571 Pages, English.