ORANGE SPINE: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail Or Survive

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? This book deals with these questions. From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamonds Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamonds 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 Diamonds Collapse also shows how – unlike our ancestors – we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race – Daily Mail Riveting, superb, terrifying – Observer Gripping … the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it – Economis This book shines like all Diamonds work – Sunday Times