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COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond

  • Professor of Geography, College of Letters and Science, Social Sciences Division, University of California-Los Angeles

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond investigated how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that have allowed them to dominate much of the world. In his latest book, COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Diamond now focuses on the other side of the equation. He shows how, historically, societies have either squandered or savored their natural and human resources and how these different choices have led some to catastrophe, others to survival and even success. He draws parallels across centuries and continents by creating a common road map of factors that affected the fate of each civilization and traces the fundamental pattern that led to collapse.

Thursday, February 2, 2006