COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Diamond, Jared - 2004

New York, NY 10010, U.S.A.: Penguin Group USA Inc., 2004. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Signed by author ("best wishes" and signature only) on ffep, 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? Author of GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL. New, unread copy, in new, mylar-protected dust jacket. 575 pp., with index. Fine, first edition, first printing, in fine, mylar-protected dust cover. [Not remainder-mared or price-clipped[ BUND