01399nam a2200169Ia 4500 20250117103852.0 250117s9999 xx 000 0 und d 9780241958681 330DIA Diamond, Jared M. Collapse how societies choose to fail or succeed New York Penguin Books 2011 xii, 589 p. : ill., maps ; 22 cm. Includes index. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Collapse moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society?s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana. Social history--Case studies. 7287 7287 0 0 0 0 U001 U001 2025-01-17 0 330DIA 007674 2025-01-31 00:00:00 2025-01-17 BK