Collapse

How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond’s Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder – and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond’s Collapse also shows how – unlike our ancestors – we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.