Comments | jwg: Collapse

jwg

Collapse

Dec 23, 2010 21:08

No, not me collapsing. I'm reading a fantastically interesting book: Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Diamond is a professor of Geography at UCLA. (He won the Pulitzer for another book: Guns, Germs and Steel which I'll read as some point ( Read more... )

politics, reading, easterisland, science

Comments 4

jwg December 24 2010, 02:23:18 UTC

The Serpent Boa is from Le Petit Prince.

pinkfish December 24 2010, 02:34:12 UTC

When you read a book like this, the parallels to current times are difficult to avoid. Is this us, as the reader, doing this, or does the author make these parallels? When was it written?

jwg December 24 2010, 02:47:38 UTC

It was published in 2005. He talks a bit about the current situation but leaves most of the thoughts about the current mess up to the reader. He clearly wants the reader to think about the implications of what he is writing about, but how could you not do that anyway. I just peeked at the end - he says he is a cautious optimist.

keyne December 25 2010, 06:59:01 UTC

Guns, Germs and Steel is superb.

I haven't read Collapse yet; I'll have to pick it up.