| Description |
xi, 575 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 529-560) and index. |
| Contents |
Prologue : a tale of two farms -- pt. 1: Modern Montana. Under Montana's big sky -- pt. 2: Past societies. Twilight at Easter -- The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands -- The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors -- The Maya collapses -- The Viking prelude and fugues -- Norse Greenland's flowering -- Norse Greenland's end -- Opposite paths to success -- pt. 3: Modern societies. Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide -- One island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti -- China, lurching giant -- "Mining" Australia -- pt. 4: Practical lessons. Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? -- Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes -- The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today? |
| Summary |
What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture of Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals or environment gives us. |
| Subject |
Social history -- Case studies.
|
|
Social history -- Case studies. |
|
Social history. |
|
Social change -- Case studies.
|
|
Social change. |
| Genre/Form |
Case studies.
|
| Subject |
Environmental policy -- Case studies.
|
|
Environmental policy -- Case studies. |
| Genre/Form |
Case studies.
|
| ISBN |
0670033375 |
|
