
Collapse
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Murney
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By:
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Jared Diamond
About this listen
As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, 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, 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.
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: how can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?
©2004 Jared Diamond (P)2004 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"A thought-provoking book." (Booklist)
"An enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature." (Publishers Weekly)
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Story
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
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Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
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Manhunt
- The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
- By: James L. Swanson
- Narrated by: Richard Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history, the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild 12-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.
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Fascinating!
- By F. Elizabeth Hauser on 12-14-08
By: James L. Swanson
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Guns, Germs, and Steel
- The Fates of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life.
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Badly Abridged
- By Carol L. on 09-19-06
By: Jared Diamond
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Reformations
- The Early Modern World, 1450-1650
- By: Carlos M. N. Eire
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 39 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the 200-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone but continues to shape our world and define who we are today.
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Catholics don’t believe in “Works Righteousness”
- By Liam Cruz Kelly on 02-23-19
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Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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The Weaponisation of Everything
- A Field Guide to the New Way of War
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Mark Galeotti
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Hybrid war, grey-zone warfare, unrestricted war: Today, traditional conflict - fought with guns, bombs, and drones - has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. In an age when America threatens Europe with sanctions, and when China spends billions buying influence abroad, the world is heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared, and unending.
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Clear, concise, and thought provoking
- By Dad / Husband (who rarely reviews) on 03-08-22
By: Mark Galeotti
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Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome
- By: Anthony Everitt
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed British historian Anthony Everitt delivers a compelling account of the former orphan who became Roman emperor in A.D. 117 after the death of his guardian Trajan. Hadrian strengthened Rome by ending territorial expansion and fortifying existing borders. And - except for the uprising he triggered in Judea - his strength-based diplomacy brought peace to the realm after a century of warfare.
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A Biography "too tall for the height of the cella"
- By Darwin8u on 08-23-12
By: Anthony Everitt
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The Europeans
- Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 21 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange - they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures.
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DO LISTEN TO THIS BOOK!!!
- By JK on 10-28-21
By: Orlando Figes
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Upheaval
- Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In his earlier best sellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final audiobook in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change - a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma.
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The Urine of the Earth in a Teacup
- By Marian on 05-12-19
By: Jared Diamond
For us all
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Jared accomplishes a similar task in "Collapse." I found myself looking forward to long walks in the park because I would be able to listen attentively to the audio book while I exercised.
I found the content alarming on many levels. But the information contained in "Collapse" is something that anybody who wants to claim to be a responsible citizen needs to hear.
"Collapse" is the best book I ever hated to hear.
The Best Book I Ever Hated To Hear!
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I found his evidence compelling enough that I'm re-thinking many of my long held positions. When a book causes me to ponder like that, I consider it an excellent investment.
It's so profound that I bought the hardcover too!
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Great Book
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If you want to pick up or listen to a book that says everything is rosy, fiction, then this might not be your book. If you want a great research book on why societies have not lasted and what might be some of the lessons, this is definitely your book. "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", this at a time when the schools are getting rid of history classes to make the grade in other subjects.
Guns, Germs and Steel is his previous book and is an awesome read also.
He does it again!!!
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fascinating but oh so depressing
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Any additional comments?
In _Collapse_, Jared Diamond thoughtfully and respectfully examines the complex interplay of factors that lead to a society's success or failure. Although it reads like a college textbook at times, and some of the material could have been edited out with no loss of clarity, it certainly is a fascinating survey of various cultures and an illuminating guide to a complex set of issues facing all of humanity.A Careful Treatment of a Complex Issue
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Excellent
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The two points that I found unsatisfactorily address were: 1) How applicable are past lessons about resource use and reliance from Easter Island and Viking Greenland to 1st world societies today? 2) What factors outside of our environmental reliance on dwindling resources may also contribute to 1st-world collapse in the modern age? The first question was dealt with quickly only via a straw man argument, while the later is not touched on at all.
That said, the book does provide interesting cultural history lessons, and its applicability to the third world today (as evidenced in the Hati and Rwanda examples) is compelling. Diamond also provides a interesting look at what economic factors contribute to certain industries being more or less environmentally responsible. This section was compelling, but too small a portion of the whole text in my opinion.
If you are looking for a book on the management of natural resources, or a look at several interesting historical cultures, I think you will enjoy this book. If, like me, you are looking for a more pragmatic discussion of the large problems threatening society today, you may want to pass.
A Better Title: Environmental Collapses Then & Now
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Don't Play Around with Mother Nature
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