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How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond
Penguin, 2005
First Edition: 2004

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Editorial Rating

10

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

In this fascinating, surprising study, Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond examines how and why some societies fail while others thrive. Diamond makes this history of failed societies into a page-turner, while resisting the urge to oversimplify. He unflinchingly examines cannibalism and mass murder in the hellish downfalls of Easter Island and Rwanda. Yet, he also outlines hope-inspiring successes in New Guinea, Japan and the Dominican Republic. This fat tome is quite engrossing, though in spots Diamond shows an academic’s weakness for repetition and caveats. Even so, this compelling classic deservedly has spent a long time on the bestseller lists. getAbstract recommends it to anyone who hopes to understand how human societies have gone wrong – and right.

Take-Aways

  • Modern society faces the possibility of a stark decline in global living standards.
  • Societal collapses often result from too many people competing for resources.
  • The collapse of Easter Island’s Polynesian society came after the inhabitants cut down the island’s trees for making statues and cooking food.

About the Author

Jared Diamond teaches geography at UCLA. His previous book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, won the Pulitzer Prize. He also has won the National Medal of Science and many other awards, and has written more than 200 articles for Discover, Nature and other magazines.

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