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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (平装)
by Jared Diomond
| Category:
Non-fiction, Civilization, Socio-economic, History |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A thoroughly researched and fascinating book offering reasons why civilizations have failed in the past. |
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AllReviews |
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The Seattle Times (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Diamond's most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don't just educate and provoke, but entertain. |
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Boston Globe (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Extremely persuasive… replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics. |
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The New York Times Book Review (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in [its] ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. |
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Starred Review. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, geographer Diamond laid out a grand view of the organic roots of human civilizations in flora, fauna, climate and geology. That vision takes on apocalyptic overtones in this fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations. Diamond examines storied examples of human economic and social collapse, and even extinction, including Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse. He explores patterns of population growth, overfarming, overgrazing and overhunting, often abetted by drought, cold, rigid social mores and warfare, that lead inexorably to vicious circles of deforestation, erosion and starvation prompted by the disappearance of plant and animal food sources. Extending his treatment to contemporary environmental trouble spots, from Montana to China to Australia, he finds today's global, technologically advanced civilization very far from solving the problems that plagued primitive, isolated communities in the remote past. At times Diamond comes close to a counsel of despair when contemplating the environmental havoc engulfing our rapidly industrializing planet, but he holds out hope at examples of sustainability from highland New Guinea's age-old but highly diverse and efficient agriculture to Japan's rigorous program of forest protection and, less convincingly, in recent green consumerism initiatives. Diamond is a brilliant expositor of everything from anthropology to zoology, providing a lucid background of scientific lore to support a stimulating, incisive historical account of these many declines and falls. Readers will find his book an enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature. |
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Victor Vyssotsky (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Mr. Diamond has written an excellent book, with more accurate information and fewer omissions, misconceptions and flaws than I would expect of any book by anyone covering such a wide range of subject material. I recommend it heartily.
This being said, I'll now observe that he overlooks several aspects of human psychology and social behavior that are pertinent to his theme and go far to explain the phenomena he documents.
First off, almost all of us place more emphasis on the near future than on the far future, and for very good reasons. If I were offered a choice of $1,000,000 today or $10,000,000 dollars to be distributed to my grandchildren 50 years from now, I would take the million dollars today. Why? Because I have seen enough inflation (moderate in the USA, extreme elsewhere I have lived) to doubt the value of $10,000,000 50 years from now, even if the promise to pay is kept, which my experience leads me to doubt. And besides, how can I guess what the situation of my grandchildren will be 50 years from now and whether they will have a use for the money and a desire for it, even if they are still alive. You may make a different choice in this example, but I'd guess that if you think carefully about your own choices, you will find that in most cases you choose a predictable short-term gain to a problematic long-term gain.
Second, individuals and societies adapt, even unconsciously, to changing environmental conditions. Having been raised in the rural South many years ago, I am appalled at much of the packaged food sold in supermarkets, so full of taste enhancements, additives, coloring agents, preservatives and other contaminants, that I consider it unfit for human consumption. But most people raised in towns, cities or suburbs seem to prefer their fruit juice sweetened with corn syrup and laced with chemicals to color it and preserve it, and similarly with most other packaged foods. When I look at supermarket beef, I'm astonished; it comes from steers fed huge doses of antibiotics to make them grow fast and make their meat tastier, but I personally dislike to eat meat raised that way. And so on. Most people are either unaware or just don't mind. Which is ok; people are entitled to make their own choices. Good furniture made today is very different from good furniture made in 1850, but few people realize how different, because most people don't crawl under tables, remove drawers to examine joinery, look at the backs of cabinets and hutches, ... as I do. By and large, people in the US get better furniture today than their forebears of 1850, because more of us can afford it, but the materials and cabinetry are far inferior to those of 150 years ago, for two reasons. First, the materials used for good furniture in the 1850s are essentially unobtainable today; a dropleaf dining table to seat ten people made in 1850 could have each leaf, and the top of the center section, made from a single piece of flawless butternut, but if butternut trees capable of yielding such lumber still exist today, they are not for sale at any reasonable price. Furthermore, very few Americans today can afford the cost of a skilled cabinetmaker doing first-rate work, so the joinery I see in modern furniture is almost always sloppy, except in the most obviously visible spots. But nobody seems to mind; we have adjusted comfortably to a higher standard of living with furniture that won't last. So, we make do with what we have.
Another factor that Mr. Diamond acknowledges but finds a bit mysterious is the fact that societies often ignore good and readily available alternatives. In many cases, it is because that alternative isn't obvious, and takes unavailable skill and training. My favorite example is related to the fact that in most of the Northeastern US fireplaces and wood stoves for heating are considered undesirable sources of smog. They need not be. If one knows how and when to cut, split and dry black locust, and how to preheat a wood stove to burn it, one gets a fire with the fuel value of anthracite, but that emits no smoke and essentially no pollutants except carbon dioxide. But black locust is not sold for firewood any place I've ever been; indeed it's considered a weed tree. Why? Because it's quite difficult to start it burning unless one knows how, and also because splitting and drying it takes some specialized knowledge. So this good source of alternative energy remains unused; few people know how, and those who do have no incentive to teach that skill to others in their communities.
Fourth, alternative energy sources pose a problem that's seldom discussed: the extreme difficulty of computing life-cycle environmental impact. Wind turbine towers for electricity generation are nearly nonpolluting in operation, but making the steel and other metals, plastics, lubricants and insulation they require is a task involving industrial processes that are intensely polluting. So also with solar panels, heat pumps, geothermal energy, hydroelectric power, and other such sources. The current enthusiasm for "environmentally sound" energy sources is perhaps well founded, but who calculates, or can calculate, the overall environmental impact, including the impact of making, maintaining and disposing of all that stuff? I can't calculate it, and I believe few people can; even the federal government would have trouble doing it.
To conclude, I wish to correct one misconception in Mr. Diamond's book. He quite obviously believes that sheep-raising has less environmental impact than raising cattle, hogs and goats. Well, from being a long-ago farm boy with manure caked on my shoes, I can say with certainty that sheep do more to damage the environment than any of the other three species unless extreme care is taken. This is for three reasons. First, sheep crop grass right to the ground, so that it does not regenerate quickly, and until it does, the soil is very subject to erosion. Second, unlike goats, sheep will not eat most kinds of weeds or shrubs, so pastures used continuously for sheep soon lose their grass and bacome weed-and-shrub-covered barrens. Third, sheep have a built-in habit of walking single file and using the same routes repeatedly, so on slopes their sharp hooves cut through sod and produce ready-made gullies that erode like crazy. These undesirable environmental effects can be avoided by intensive supervision of sheep herds, and frequent moving of the herd from one grazing area to another. To top this off, sheep, unlike goats, cattle or hogs, uniformly panic in the presence of predators, so one bear taking one sheep from a herd will typically result in a dozen or more dead sheep that fell off cliffs, drowned in streams,... These difficulties in raising sheep are the whole reason why skilled shepherds with trained sheep dogs still find employment. Given that Mr. Diamond lives in the Bitteroot Valley part of the time, I suggest to him that he lease 40 acres of grassy hillside, put 40 sheep on it for three months, and see what they did to the land. He won't like it.
Worthwhile, provocative, but with flaws. Still, this is a fine book. |
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Jack Kessler (MSL quote) , USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
As other reviewers here have mentioned, Diamond spends too much attention on the Greenland Norse and his arguments about them are unpersuasive. He draws conclusions about the end of their society that he himself gives plenty of evidence to believe are wrong. The three economic bases of Greenland Norse society, he tells us, were agriculture, game hunting, and hunting for Walrus ivory to trade to Europe.
Agricultural production shrank because of worsening weather in Greenland. There were repeated crop failures and consequent loss of farm animals, followed by intermittent starvation. The ivory trade ended when the Crusades opened Mediterranean trade routes between Europe and the Arabs. That made elephant ivory available in Europe, which was cheaper and superior to Greenland walrus ivory. The end of the ivory trade destroyed the economic basis of ship traffic between Europe and Greenland. Further, as Diamond explains, increasing ice floes in Greenland fjords made navigation difficult and finally impossible, and ended Greenland's connection with Europe.
Diamond is vague about whether hunting for food became less productive because of the worsening weather or because of competition for game from the Inupiat Eskimos, or both. Diamond suggests the Inupiat may have massacred the last few remaining Norse.
He also mentions that Greenland had been populated by four successive waves of peoples coming from the Canadian arctic, each of whom died out, apparently during past eras of worsening weather.
From these facts Diamond somehow concludes that the cause of the failure of Norse Greenland was their failure to become Inupiat Eskimos. He says they died out because of their cultural inflexibility. That is not much more relevant than saying they died out because they didn't have supermarkets.
Along similar lines he concludes that the near extinction of the Easter Islanders was their cutting down the trees on which their agriculture was dependent. He gives this as an example of environmental short-sightedness. He does not mention the generally accepted theory that they did it, not carelessly, but as deliberate acts of destruction during a lengthy and ultimately mutually suicidal civil war. The conclusion that Diamond draws may still be true, but is very much beside the point in answering what the Easter Islanders could or should have done differently.
Many of Diamond's other conclusions are similarly unpersuasive. This was particularly disappointing since his earlier "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was so thought-provoking and interesting. It may be cynical and even unkind to say so, but the obvious paddedness of the book made me wonder if there was not a book contract somewhere requiring the book to be at least of some specified length. Even more cynically, I wondered if the largely irrelevant-to-anything and apparently tacked-on-afterwards section on Montana's Bitteroot Valley was not a way to make his trips there tax deductible.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.)
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Diana Fleischman (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
I really like reading Diamond's books because they offer so much information about so many different fields. For example I knew nothing about China's industrial waste, or mining, or Australia's indigenous destruction until I read this book. He conveys so much enthusiasm for what he writes about. That said you could read every other page and maybe not get every detail but certainly get the gist that he continuously hammers into the reader's skull. Diamond has a bad habit of at once assuming you are someone interested in chemistry, psychology, anthropology or anything else he could throw at you and at the same time assuming you have very little if any short term memory. All in all a good read even if a little sensationalistic and redundant. |
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T. Hooper (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
In this book, Jared Diamond puts forth a theory that many societies have collapsed in the past due to environmental degradation, and that if we're not too careful in the future, the same fate awaits us. Some have criticized this book as the rankings of a environmentalist nut, but I have to strongly disagree. In fact, Mr. Diamond takes a very moderate position on environmentalism. What I found particularly interesting is his claim that safeguarding the environment actually makes good business sense for companies in the long run, and that those companies that are realizing this are the ones that will benefit in the future. On the other hand, companies which ignore the impact of their actions will find themselves in the same position as the collapsed societies mentioned in this book. Those who deny the impact that humans have on the Earth are living in a dream world. Environmental problems, if no actions are taken, will only increase, especially as people in developing countries aspire to the same living standards as can be found in developed countries.
The chapters which I found particularly interested were those on the Greenland Norse. Their situation was particularly enlightening for one reason: they could have avoided collapse. Despite the climate change which occurred in their environment, they took no action to change their ways. Diamond points out that instead of learning new technology from their Inuit neighbors, they clung stubbornly to their European habits and identity, which doomed them to destruction. If applied to the modern world, we can see that stubbornly clinging to old ways of life which no longer suit our environment will lead to problems in the future and possible collapse.
I definitely recommend that all people read this and think seriously about what will happen in the near future. |
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John (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
In Collapse, Jared Diamond has successfully examined the thousands of year of human history, by evaluating many of the great civilizations that went extinct due to their inability to recognize the limits of their resources and the strength of the forces of nature. The failures of those ancient and modern societies especially in Africa and Asia, as well the Easter Island and Greenland stemmed from the fact that they were compromised by their environment through disasters that were either natural or induced.
In this well-researched book, Diamond wrote of eco-disasters and the depletion of environmental resources through unsustainable measures as the principal causes of the demise of those societies. Not only that, he mentioned some societies that that have solved their ecological problems and succeeded. Nevertheless, the overriding point Diamond made is that in this age of globalization, societies must take collective actions to avoid the collapse of the world's highly interdependent global economy, since it is fast approaching its unsustainable level. This book is a wake up call for the world to develop sustainable sources of energy that does not compromise the environment. Hydrogen cars, solar energy etc should be things for the immediate tomorrow.
The lesson is clear. Those societies that can adapt their ways of life to be in line with the potentials of their environment last while those societies that abuse their resources ultimate commit suicide, and so fail. Now, for the first time in human history, modern technology, global inter- dependence and international cooperation have provided us with the means and opportunity to judiciously use our resource and prevent their depletion not only from a small scale, but from a global scale as well. It is only by harnessing this new knowledge to sustain our planet, that we shall avoid the fate of self-destruction, like several great societies before us. Also recommended: Union Moujik, Freakanomics. I like reading deep and moving books. |
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Chris Luallen (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-30 00:00>
Jared Diamond is a highly respected scholar who, like Bernard Lewis and Karen Armstrong, is able to write serious books that convey a wealth of knowledge but are also a pleasure to read. This is in contrast to the many dry, dull tomes written by some others in academia. In this aspect, Collapse is a success. But, unfortunately, it just doesn't rise to the extremely high standard set by his previous title, Guns, Germs And Steel, one of my favorite non-fiction books.
I most enjoyed the middle chapters which discuss how environmental problems can lead to societal breakdowns, as was the case with the collapse of the Mayan Empire and the extreme violence committed by Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda. I also think Diamond does a capable job of explaining many of the major environmental problems, such as deforestation, global warming and human overpopulation, facing us in the 21st century. However, Diamond comes across as too much of a "politician," rather than a scientist, in his writings on environmental issues. For example,, he seems to be trying to please everybody and offend no one when discussing the negative environmental effects caused by the poor practices of certain logging and mining companies. Obviously, economic needs and environmental concerns must learn to co-exist. And, of course, good "corporate citizenship" should be applauded when it occurs. But, since Diamond is a dedicated environmentalist who understands the science behind the "web of life" and the importance of preserving it, he should have been less timid and mealy mouthed in his explanations. He also failed to emphasis the fact that other species have an intrinsic right to exist as part of this "web of life" of which we humans are only a part of rather than separate from. In other words, preserving the wholeness and integrity of the bio-sphere is more important than short term human convenience. "Deep ecology" is an essential concept to understand when discussing the environment. Jared certainly understands this but prefers to stay in shallow waters, apparently because he doesn't want to upset his anti-environmentalist critics. I would hope for more courage on his part.
Collapse is still a book worth reading. But it seems a little weak willed and not close to the level of his outstanding Guns, Germs And Steel. |
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