The author of this book was extremely long-winded, so I am going to do the opposite with this review and keep it short and simple.

I went into this read excited by the content. I love history and I love little known history even more. This book was a blend of past, present and future regarding how humans are affecting the planet. The basic premise was good and the examples the author chose to write about were perfect. I rank the chapters that discussed Easter Island, various other islands and Greenland’s Viking colony the highest because they were fascinating. The other chapters contained some interesting information too but weren’t as engaging. I kept dozing off while reading them and considered skimming through them more times than I care to admit.

Three stars to a book that needed a few hundred pages of unnecessary extra removed from it.

So I was in Belize for the holiday and became fascinated with all the Mayan ruins I visited. I had been to Copan in Honduras years ago, but was reminded of the great glory of this civilization, and the controversial collapse that happened to disperse people from these great structures around 900 AD.

I love Guns Germs and Steel more than anything, it changed how I look at history and people and society, so I dug into this one, particularly the Mayan part, with great excitement. And it doesn't disappoint.

A lot of this book is clearly set up to support the author's argument, that it is the roll of the dice of how delicate the ecology is where societies set up shop, and how the societies treated them that causes collapse. Basically an extension of Guns Germs and Steel. This puts a stark face on how we should and need to consider dealing with the environment cards we're dealt though.

Nothing is more tragic than the Easter Island chapter, it is breathtaking the research and evidence that proves why they disappeared, and tragic if you think about it in the context of our earth, from which we really cannot escape, same as the Easter Islanders.

If you are an environmentalist or not, there are thought provoking ideas and statistics here that put a concrete face to a cause that has become an emotional and numbing topic. You can tell people what they SHOULD care about, what they SHOULD do, but until you convince yourself it's important, you cannot change yourself or who is around you. This book put that part of me that feels strongly about preserving/managing the environment, and made it logical and scientific again.

This is NOT a book trying to convince you to care about the environment, it's a survey of lost civilizations and how they collapsed. The awareness for me was a byproduct, and fascinating in its own right.

LESSON GIVERS ARE BORING AND NO HISTORIANS

JARED DIAMOND – COLLAPSE – 2005-2011

This book is a long collection of cases of civilizations or countries that failed, how they failed, what were the causes of their failing (plus a few success stories). This insistence on failing makes it very pessimistic in many ways. But the second characteristic is that the book does not explore the past for itself, but it is exploring the past to draw lessons for the present. The basic assumption is thus that the present world is on the brink of failing or collapsing. That takes a lot of value from the book because then the cases are understood as being illustrations if not arguments for the importance of climate change in human history, and the importance of environmental sustainability. And actually, we are brought to thinking that some cases have been over-exploited in that direction; The main shortcoming is that at times the book is retrospective. It does not try to understand what happened in the past, but it looks at it with a modern vision, a modern interpretation, something that is anachronistic in the past situations that are concerned.

That’s why he gives the conclusions in the opening prologue. We are going to start with them, I mean to list them, not discuss them. Then we will consider a few cases, hence a few chapters.

He starts with giving the TWELVE causes of collapse that he also calls threats. A first group of eight that I number here, though they are not in the book:
1-tdeforestation and habitat destruction;
2-tsoil problem (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses);
3-twater management problems;
4-toverhunting;
5-toverfishing;
6-teffects of introduced species on native species;
7-thuman population growth;
8-tincreased per capita impact of people. (page 6, my numbering).

To these he adds four new ones (understood as from the present):
9-thuman-caused climate change;
10-tthe buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment;
11-tenergy shortages;
12-tfull human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. (page 7, my numbering)

He can then consider our present and list four modern advantages:
1-tour powerful technology (i.e., its beneficial effects);
2-tglobalization;
3-tmodern medicine;
4-tgreater knowledge of past societies and of distant modern societies. (page 8, my numbering)

And to complete this listing he gives four modern risks:
1-tour potent technology (i.e., its unintended destructive effects);
2-tglobalization (such that now a collapse even in remote Somalia affects the U.S. and Europe);
3-tthe dependence of millions (and, soon, billions) of us on modern medicine for our survival;
4-tour much larger human population. (page 8, my numbering)

Without discussing these elements, we can shift to his next listing of his

“five-point framework of possible contributing factors that I now consider in trying to understand any putative environmental collapse. Four of those sets of factors – 1- environmental damage, 2- climate change; 3- hostile neighbors; and 4- friendly trade partners – may or may not prove significant for a particular society. The fifth set of factors – 5- the society’s responses to its environmental problems – always proves significant. (page 11, my numbering)

He then examines them separately and it is interesting to see the longer phrasing he uses.
1-tThe first set of factors involves damage that people inadvertently inflict on their environment (page 11, my numbering);
2-tThe next consideration in my five-point framework is climate change, a term that today we tend to associate with global warming caused by humans (page 12, my numbering);
3-tThe third consideration is hostile neighbors (page 13, my numbering);
4-tThe fourth set of factors is the converse of the third set: decreased support by friendly neighbors (page 14, my numbering);
5-tThe last set of factors in my five-point framework involves the ubiquitous question of the society’s responses to its problems (page 14, my numbering).

He then explains that his method is a comparative method, meaning that he will systematically compare crises in various societies to understand each one. And he gives his conclusion straight away:

“Globalization . . . lies at the heart of the strongest reasons both for pessimism and for optimism about our ability to solve our current environmental problems . . . For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past.” (page 23-24)

That is my introduction, but it is the author’s conclusions, that I did not discuss at all, given in his prologue to the book. That is not very scientific and in the book it is clear that there is no real diachrony, historicity, phylogeny of anything, but simply the synchronic study of cases with no real phylogenetic approach of each case within the general phylogeny of humanity, and this succession of synchronic studies is transferred in in the book’s conclusive chapters onto the present in the last part of the book on “Practical Lessons” which only target the possible political decisions humanity has to take to face, confront and fight in order to solve the climate challenge of today. The point is each case requires so much discussion that the practical lessons are nothing but preaching from a preacher who has interpreted the past or present, old or recent cases in his sole perspective of supporting if not validating his own political position for today’s world. I can stop there and let you discover that political statement of his that as a historian I do not even want to discuss: politics is not history.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

کتاب فروپاشی، به بررسی این مسئله می‮پردازد که چگونه جوامع انسانی در اثر عوامل مختلف دچار انحطاط و فروپاشی می‮شوند.

این کتاب، تحقیقی در مورد سقوط و فروپاشی برخی از تمدن‌های برتر تاریخ جهان است. با اینکه جارد دایموند بخش عمده کتاب را به توضیح در مورد ‮دلایل نابودی تمدن‮های تاریخی مانند مایا و یا وایکنیگ‮ها اختصاص داده است، اما خط سیر کتاب فروپاشی، به گونه‮ای است که برخلاف سایر کتاب های تاریخی جرد دایموند نیست و نویسنده در این کتاب با نگاهی موشکافانه به بررسی عوامل سقوط جوامع پرداخته است؛ دلایلی که در ظاهر امر نمی‮توان آن را تشخیص داد و باید به عمقش نفوذ کرد.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

This book explains reasons why a society may collapse or may succeed. It reviews great Empires that have vanished due to mistakes they made. Jared Diamond based the reasons for collapse on a five point framework.

The first is the environmental damage a country has produced. Many societies had cut down all their trees to build homes, heat homes and build tools. However, they either lacked the knowledge or did not consider to seed new trees to replace the old ones. Tree loss not only caused erosion and with it farm land loss but also left no place for animals to survive which they could hunt for food. Easter Islanders disappeared from history because the people consumed all of its trees. They left us with incredible statues made of red stone that weigh 12 tons but no decedents of those who built it.

Volcanic ash provides nutrients to the soil so societies who had volcanic activity had productive farming while those that did not farmed all the nutrients from the soil and then could not grow anything else. For example Japan’s volcanic activity provided the small island with arable land due to the nutrients in volcanic ash.

The second factor is climate change. The climate has changed over and over throughout history hurting some societies while helping others. Many became either drier, colder, wetter or hotter which the unfortunate people were not prepared to handle. For example, part of the reason the Norse who inhabited Greenland failed was due to sea ice formations preventing shipping trade with Norway.

The third factor is the proximity to hostile neighbors. If a country was not strong enough to hold off a neighbor it would likely be overtaken by them. The example given is the great Roman Empire’s collapse due to Germanic invasions.

The fourth factor is s loss of support from trading partners. Most societies needed goods that other countries could provide. If that support stopped the society may collapse. An example arises today as wealthy European countries rely on third world countries to supply oil to them.

The final factor is how the societies respond to the other four factors. The Inuit people, for example, survived living in Greenland (unlike the Norse) by using little wood. They built Igloos for houses, hunted whales for food and hunted seals to burn their blubber for heat. They also stretched seal skins to make kayaks.
Another example is the past societies of Highland New Guinea, Japan, Tikopia, and Tonga developed successful forestry management programs thus surviving to this day. On the other hand, Easter Island, Mangareva, and Norse Greenland failed to develop forestry management and collapsed as a result.

Fortunately Mr. Diamond sees that many countries today have rectified mistakes of the past so our humanity still has a chance to prosper well into the future.

13th book for 2018.

This is a big, detailed book that covers a lot of ground. To get a couple of things out of the way: it's not a repeat of Diamond's earlier book Guns, Germs, Steel; and it's not Diamond arguing for some sort of environmental determinism. Diamond believes that societal outcomes are related to three main factors:

Environment + Social Structures + Technology = Societal Outcome

This equation is misleading, as the factors interact (e..g, environment may limit trade, which then limits the sorts of technologies available; social structures directly affect what sorts technologies employed etc etc). As someone trained in geography, Diamond focuses more on the environmental side of things, but he's certainly not dismissive of the other two factors (and in fact goes to some length to discuss the political and technological factors where he thinks they are relevant).

The book covers (in great detail) a number of societies that have collapsed, in particular Easter Island's and the Norse Greenland colony.

In the case of Easter Island, he finds that several environmental factors made the ecology of the island particularly vulnerable to the Polynesian culture there (e.g., poor soils due to lack of volcanic fallout leading to slow regrowth of trees), unlike some other Pacific Islands were similar practices did not lead to societal collapse; in the case of Greenland Norse, a harsh environment could not in itself be blame, as he is at pains to point out, the Inuit with a very different societial/technological basis thrived.

He also covers societies that have done more or less better (Hispaniola vs Haiti, Japan vs China) and others where environmental factors are causing increasing stress (the chapter on Australia was particularly depressing).

The book ends with a summary of the various environmental trends that will become critical in the not too distant future (global warming; depletion of soils; over population; death of the oceans etc etc). Diamond offers excellent and heartfelt suggestions about how we could avoid going over the environmental cliff in all these cases.

Although the book was published some years ago, it's a must read for anyone wanting an overview of the state of global environment.

5-stars.

Diamond explores the reasons for societies going through and coming out of crisis, using examples in Chile, Germany, Indonesia, Japan and Finland. Diamond's ability to bring together multiple disciplines and establish common themes amongst countries which experience and overcome crisis is a reflection of his wide-ranging sociological, political, psychological and economic expertise.

Diamond is also able to dissect the often parochially minded politics and outlooks of countries who find themselves squandering their advantages due to the desire to achieve short-term political gains, or how they can be lured into a false sense of security, whether it be due to political naivete, a sense of exceptionalism or a misplaced sense of optimism, into thinking they are not in a crisis and therefore find themselves falling deeper and deeper into a crisis situation which they are never able to work their way out of.

What is most prescient about Diamond's reflections however, are his observations on the increasingly fragile nature of American politics which, in the years following the publication of the book, has found itself teetering on the path towards dictatorship. Overall 'Collapse' is a compelling and well evidence, if somewhat dry, exploration of modern day politics.

Very good. Ranges credibly across multiple academic disciplines and historical periods in a way that is serious, accessible and engaging. Crucially for such an emotive topic the conclusions are balanced, with Diamond eschewing single cause explanations for past societal collapses and challenging those who hold specific business sectors or industrial practices responsible for all the world’s current environmental and socio-economic challenges. As Diamond himself acknowledges, this approach leaves him exposed to criticism both from ideological purists and deep subject matter experts on the various societies and issues he examines. However, the methodology is clearly explained, the sources fairly attributed and the synthesis achieved without taking any major liberties, all whilst articulating some punchy and challenging arguments. I’m not sure you can ask much more of a work of popular history/science/anthropology/geography/philosophy.

This book was groundbreaking - I actually started this book in order to explore how societies have flourished and vanished over the course of the years. I expected to receive an overview of all factors, politically, economically and environmentally. However, Jared Diamond only concentrates to the environmentally factors - not only limiting himself to the disasters (Eastern Island, Maya's and the Anasazi) but also the success stories (the Tokugawa Japanese).

However, Jared not only limits himself to the history, but also drawes conclusions for our present. He shows us that we are facing the same disaster that happened upon our ancestors and in a few decades our modern world will face the same issues that were faced by the above called cultures.

Jared strongly focuses upon the fact that we need to take the matters in our own hands in order to be able to transfer our world to our children.

This was an outcome that I did not expect in this book, but has changed my attitude towards my own environment. It's not too late (although it's 5 minutes before midnight) but we need to act NOW.

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children

There are a lot of interesting historical factoid tidbits and ideas in this book, but I’d rather read the version that actually names and critiques capitalism and colonialism as source causes to collapse (how he managed to avoid using these concepts throughout says so much!), and that provides a climate justice framework as integral to our needed system change solutions. This book was definitely written in the early 2000’s but you would think Diamond had no idea that decolonization, intersectional feminism and critical theory was alive and well 20 years ago, with the language and frameworks he uses. I’m not going to take you serious if you use 3rd world/1st world binary throughout, but never even mention imperialism/colonialism when explaining world history and geography. Not visionary. Repeatedly falls into Corporate/empire apologist doublespeak. Boring at times. Not particularly well written and needs a serious edit from front to back. Shave off 150 pages easily. 2 stars overall.

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Jared Diamond shows how environmental misuse destroyed many historical civilizations and continues to damage nations today.

Collapse discusses six major reasons why civilizations fall:

1- Human ecological impacts ➡ leads to changes in climate
2-A hostile neighbor
3- A friendly neighbor who backs away from the civilization
4- Unwilling to adapt
5- Deforestation ➡ soil erosion
6- Environmental hazards (flooding, loss of wood products, crop failures and other..)

Past examples can teach us how to improve our environment. For a long time, humans have been damaging the environment, yet we may learn from those who have gone before us and restore our ecosystem.

why ⭐⭐ !! this is the answer:

I was thinking that Diamond will write something like The Third Chimpanzee (5 ⭐) which i love it, but this one is like another chapter of Guns, Germs and Steel (3⭐) (and by definition i don't give a shit about Sociology).

I only read Sociology just to understand more Anthropology!!

Von Montana, polynesischen & Maya Kulturen bis hin zu Anasazi oder Vikinger nimmt der Autor den Leser mit in eine zerstörerische Zeitreise.
Warum haben diese sehr weit entwickelten Populationen einen Zusammenbruch erlitten? Schaut man sich die Zusammenhänge an, stellt man erschreckend fest, dass das Mismanagement der Vorbote eines Verfalls ist. Warum hat man Wälder bis auf den letzten Baum gerodet?
Jared Diamond stellt richtig fest, dass nicht die Prosperität ein Indikator für die Zukunft ist, sondern die Prognose der Zukunft. Wenn wir heute genügend Geld zum Ausgeben haben und wissen, dass wir nächstes Jahr keinen Cash-Flow mehr haben, dann sehen wir uns mit höchster Wahrscheinlichkeit eben nicht mehr als Gewinner.
Was steht Australien, China und uns Europäern bevor? Wie sieht die Situation in Rwanda aus? Was können wir von Haiti und der dominikanischen Republik lernen?
Gerade jetzt stehen wir am Scheidepunkt, wo wir uns unserer Prosperität bewusst sind aber sich die Ressourcen, die wir dafür benötigen sich langsam den Ende neigen.
Es ist handeln angesagt. SOFORT. Sonst klopft uns der Verfall wie es eins die Maya heimsuchte, schon in wenigen Jahrzehnten vor der Tür. Mit nur einem Unterschied. Es wird keine Fläche mehr zum Ausweichen geben.