Collapse

Jared Diamond

"I wanted to read Collapse, in large part, because I had read Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond's first book, and was so impressed, and so when I saw it actually at the store, it was a hardback, and I'm a librarian, so I tend to check out my books sometimes, but I finally saw it at a used bookstore and ended up buying it, because I was very excited about the premise. The book, Collapse, is really about how society's overextended themselves and about the cautionary tales of how to avoid that.

I liked most about the book that the arguments were made in a way that was clear what his thesis was, by going over every group and using that as a way of describing how, in fact, certain groups fell by their overexploitation and/or their lack of trading. I think he makes a good argument, and because of that, it makes it enjoyable to read, and he uses it in historical context that makes it educational as well. There were some historical aspects that I found to be sort of tedious personally. I think he spent a lot of time on the Easter Island, the initial example of sort of an overexploitation of the area. And while it was interesting to me and actually one of the sells initially of learning about Easter Island, cuz I know very little except for about the infamous heads, he goes into it in such a detail at a certain point that it's kinda like I get the idea.

I would recommend the book to anybody that, again, is interested in how things work on a larger social scale. I think there are a lot of really prescient and important words in the last chapter that's about what's going on right now, where he talks about, you know, Rwanda and talks about China and population issues that are really just important, that, you know, high school students could and should be reading in their classrooms, just to get a big picture of, you know, that there is a certain degree of personal responsibility. I would give Collapse five out of five stars and again, because of the full set of the thesis, and in such a large social theory, and the fact that he also makes a very good argument for why that's the case, and is able to provide historical reasons why."

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