Collapse by Jared Diamond

I really enjoyed Diamond's earlier book, Guns Germs & Steel (and the dumbed down documentary series it spawned) and so had high hopes for this book. Diamond attempts to look at past societies who have faced ecological calamity and have either overcome the problems they faced, or suffered a catastrophic collapse as a result. Despite his protestations to the contrary, the book tends to spend more time focusing on those societies that underwent an epic fail, rather than those who survived. I don't think this is as big of a weakness as he seems to make it out to be, as the story of the Easter islander who cut down the last tree, or the Norse settlers of Greenland who killed their last livestock, is captivating in a morbid sort of way.

His attempt to explain all of these catastrophes in terms of six common factors, I found a little too simplistic and unsatisfying. While I don't doubt that their are common lessons to be learned from looking at a disparate collection of apocalypses, after the third of forth reducing everything to his 6 categories, it starts to feel a bit forced and uninformative. The fact that I can't really remember any of the categories probably says something too. Although I wasn't nearly as captivated by this book as his earlier work and didn't find his narrative as convincing, I was never tempted to give up on the book. If nothing else, it was worth reading for the tales of how societies collapsed under ecological strains, that were at least in part caused by their own actions. Almost every chapter could (and should because the poem is kick ass) have ended with a line from the poem Ozymandias poem by Shelley (google it if you haven't read it).

In short, not as good as his last one, still interesting for the readable historical accounts of society collapsing.

Oh yeah, what is with the trend for non-fiction books to have abstract length subtitles these days. There's something to be said for maintaining some mystery, rather than making it as explicit as the most scantily clad girl at one of those whorey clubs.