Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (also titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive) is a 2005 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles. Diamond's book deals with "societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses" (p. 15). In writing the book Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history (p. 23).

Links

 * The first chapter
 * Tokugawa Shoguns vs. Consumer Democracy: Diamond interview on the subjects raised in the book with NPQ, Spring 2005, concentrating on the intersection of politics and environmentalism.
 * How Societies Fail – And Sometimes Succeed, video of a seminar given in June 2005 at the Long Now Foundation.
 * Learning from Past Societies: The Sustainability Lessons Are There, If Only We Can Find Them – This is an assessment of the process maturity used in Collapse and a similar book, Treading Lightly, to answer their driving questions. The assessment sheds light on the process maturity of any similar effort to solve difficult complex social system problems, particularly the sustainability problem.
 * COLLAPSE? – museum exhibit developed by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in collaboration with Jared Diamond (pdf archive)
 * Environmental-issues – A public annotated bibliography containing print and online sources discussing the 12 most serious environmental problems that Diamond discusses in Collapse.
 * Environmental-issues – A public annotated bibliography containing print and online sources discussing the 12 most serious environmental problems that Diamond discusses in Collapse.