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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition by Jared Diamond

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In Jared Diamond's follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Diamond is also the author of Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis 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. Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide? Editorial Reviews Mr. Diamond...is a lucid writer with an ability to make arcane scientific concepts readiily accesible to the lay reader, and his case studies of failed cultures are never less than compelling. --The New York Times ...Collapse is a magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm. --Businessweek Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation. They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care. --Gregg Easterbrook, The New York Times Book Review - From the Publisher
Publication Details

Title: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition

Author(s):

  • Jared Diamond

Illustrator:

Binding: Paperback

Published by: Penguin Publishing Group: , 2011

Edition:

ISBN: 9780143117001 | 0143117009

608 pages. 8.42(w) x 5.46(h) x 1.30(d)

  • ENG- English
Book Condition: Very Good
3823r

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What does the Book Condition Very Good mean? Good? Fair?
See our descriptions of book descriptions here: book's conditions.
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Foxing is an age-related process of deterioration that causes spots and browning on old books. The causes of foxing are not well understood, but high humidity may contribute to to foxing. 
Foxing - Wikipedia
What is tanning?
Age tanning, or browning, occurs over time on the pages of books. This process can show up on just the edges of pages, when this occurs it is sometimes referred to as "edge tanning." This kind of deterioration is commonly seen in books printed before the advent of acid-free paper in the 1980s.
r/BookCollecting - Is this mold or normal aging for a well used book?
 
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To date it was a first edition first printing copy of JRR Tolkien’s The Two Towers. It was in very poor condition but still was worth over NZ$1000.
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  • Trade Name: Book Express Ltd
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  • Address: 35 Nathan Terrace, Shannon, 4821, New Zealand.
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