0241958687 
Paperback Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed / Jared Diamond.
Publication year: 2011
Format: Paperback
Edition: New ed.
Publisher: London : Penguin,
Resource type: Physical
ISBN: 9780241958681 (pbk.) : 0241958687 (pbk.) :
Notes:
Previous ed.: New York: Viking; London: Allen Lane, 2005.
In 'Collapse', Jared Diamond investigates the fate of past human societies, and the lessons for our own future. What happened to the people who built the ruined temples of Angkor Wat, the long-abandoned statues of Easter Island, the crumbling Maya pyramids of the Yucatan?
Description:
xii, 589 p. : map ; 20 cm.
Available at:
Many people will have stood in awe of some great monument in a remote part of the world and wondered how and why it was built. Jared Diamond poses the equally interesting question, why was it abandoned, what happened to the society that created it, the Ozymandias question. His conclusion is that societies build because they are powerful enough to deploy the resources and seek to control, what they regard, elements that give them such wealth. Equally they fail because they ignore the changes, mostly climatic, that are occurring around them. As with all of Jared Diamond’s books the range of evidence is vast, the case studies are drawn from many parts of the world throughout history. The book is an ominous warning for the world today.
29/09/14