Dr. Jared Diamond Bestselling visits Barnes & Noble in celebration of his new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
As in Guns, Germs and Steel, Dr. Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving 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, Dr. Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted.
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.
Dr. Diamond is a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among Dr. Diamond's many awards are the National Medal of Science, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
|