Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [1]
—The New York Times
“Essential reading for anyone who is unafraid to be disillusioned if it means they can walk into the future with their eyes open.”
—Nature
“On any short list of brilliant minds in the world today, Diamond makes the cut.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Read this book. It will challenge you and make you think.”
—Scientific American
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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2005 Published in Penguin Books 2006 This edition with a new afterword published 2011
Copyright © Jared Diamond, 2005, 2011
All rights reserved
Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed / Jared Diamond. p. cm. Includes index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-50200-6
1. Social history—Case studies. 2. Social change—Case studies.
3. Environmental policy—Case studies. I. Title.
HN13.D5 2005
304.2’8—dc22 2004057152
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To
Jack and Ann Hirschy,
Jill Hirschy Eliel and John Eliel,
Joyce Hirschy McDowell,
Dick (1929-2003) and Margy Hirschy,
and their fellow Montanans:
guardians of Montana’s big sky
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
“Ozymandias,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)
PROLOGUE
A Tale of Two Farms
Two farms ■ Collapses, past and present ■ Vanished Edens? ■ A five-point framework ■ Businesses and the environment ■ The comparative method ■ Plan of the book ■
A few summers ago I visited two dairy farms, Huls Farm and Gardar Farm, which despite being located thousands of miles apart were still remarkably similar in their strengths and vulnerabilities. Both were by far the largest, most prosperous, most technologically advanced farms in their respective districts. In particular, each was centered around a magnificent state-of-the-art barn