[Books 2007] Collapse

[inulro]

19. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

This is one of those rare books that was reviewed in both New Scientist and the history press (as well as the weekend papers, presumably) when it was published. The reviews from all camps distilled to "interesting, but flawed".

I'm not too sure about the flaws - I almost had him on not mentioning the black death as a contributory factor to the demise of Viking Greenland, but he mentioned it at nearly the end of the chapter. I seem to remember there being some quibbles about his treatment of the decline of Mayan civilization, but I'm not as up to date with the current thinking on that as I'd like to be.

I was particularly interested by the chapter examining the different paths of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the two halves of the island of Hispaniola. Diamond says that most international development agencies say that Haiti is beyond help and absolutely doomed; and while I'm aware that Haiti is the poorest country in the New World and a bit about its recent history, but that seems a bit harsh.

The chapter on Rwanda was interesting, having recently read Shake Hands with the Devil.

Overall, not bad.

Comments

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

I've got that - I've even read bits of it! Interesting although he does focus a bit too much on the eco-stuff.

Apparently it says in Japan they decided very early on to do environmental management 'cause they didn't want to lose all the trees and die, while on Easter Island (or somewhere) they chopped down all the trees, kept loads of pigs as a status symbol, then suffered a rapid collapse of their entire civilisaiton. There's that stuff about the Mayans there too which is interesting, but not so much is known about them and Diamond does try to squeeze the facts to fill his eco-theories, when it is just as possible that their society collapsed due to social revolution.

Speaking of which, I do think that not having the Soviet Union in it is a bit of a lapse. Whether you agreed with the politics or not (personally I'm left wing, but not that left wing), you have to admit that here is a world-spanning culture and civilisation that fell apart in the space of a few years following an oil peak, nuclear disaster and political instability.

Well worth a chapter I thought.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Good point. The one aspect of the soviet union that it had occurred to me was blatantly missing was the destruction of the Aral Sea, both under the communists and since - I've read a few things about that in the not too distant past so it was on my mind. (one of the articles in The Best American Travel Writing 2003 was about that, and I think it was covered in the wonderful BBC2 or 4 documentary about the new central Asian republics, Meet the Stans).

He does make the point that although Japan has been carefully managing its forests for over 300 years, they achieve this by buying timber from less well managed sources such as the Philippines and New Guinea.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

I've got it on the shelf, but I keep getting distracted by comics. Looking forward to it though, Guns Germs & Steel was brilliant.