Collapse

贾雷德·戴蒙德（Jared Diamond），加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校医学院生理学教授，美国艺术与科学院、国家科学院院士，是当代少数几位探究人类社会与文明的思想家之一。戴蒙德的研究使他获奖无数，包括美国国家科学奖、美国 地理学会伯尔奖、泰勒环境贡献奖、日本国际环境和谐奖和麦克阿瑟基金会研究基金。戴蒙德的代表作《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》探讨了人类社会不平等的起源和地理成因，获1998年美国普利策奖和英国科普图书奖。

出版者:Penguin Books

作者:Jared Diamond

页数:575

出版时间:2005-12-27

价格:GBP 11.12

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780143036555

图书标签:历史社会学JaredDiamondEnvironment社科社会人类学History

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Book Description

In this fascinating book, Diamond seeks to understand the fates of past societies that collapsed for ecological reasons, combining the most important policy debate of this generation with the romance and mystery of lost worlds.

Amazon.com

Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.

Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Jennifer Buckendorff

From Publishers Weekly

In his Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, geographer Diamond laid out a grand view of the organic roots of human civilizations in flora, fauna, climate and geology. That vision takes on apocalyptic overtones in this fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations. Diamond examines storied examples of human economic and social collapse, and even extinction, including Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse. He explores patterns of population growth, overfarming, overgrazing and overhunting, often abetted by drought, cold, rigid social mores and warfare, that lead inexorably to vicious circles of deforestation, erosion and starvation prompted by the disappearance of plant and animal food sources. Extending his treatment to contemporary environmental trouble spots, from Montana to China to Australia, he finds today's global, technologically advanced civilization very far from solving the problems that plagued primitive, isolated communities in the remote past. At times Diamond comes close to a counsel of despair when contemplating the environmental havoc engulfing our rapidly industrializing planet, but he holds out hope at examples of sustainability from highland New Guinea's age-old but highly diverse and efficient agriculture to Japan's rigorous program of forest protection and, less convincingly, in recent green consumerism initiatives. Diamond is a brilliant expositor of everything from anthropology to zoology, providing a lucid background of scientific lore to support a stimulating, incisive historical account of these many declines and falls. Readers will find his book an enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature. Photos.

From Booklist

Defining collapse as "extreme decline," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), which posed questions about Western civilization's domination of much of the world, now examines the reverse side of that coin. Diamond ponders reasons why certain civilizations have collapsed. With an eye on the implications for the present and future, he bases his analysis on his newly phrased version of an old maxim about what history teaches: "The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn." Drawing examples from this database, from Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the Viking outposts in Greenland to the Mayan civilization in Central America, the author finds "the fundamental pattern of catastrophe" that is apparent in these populations that once flourished and then collapsed. The template he holds up is a construct based on five factors, including environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbors. In addition, Diamond casts his critical but acute and inclusive gaze on the issue of why civilizations fail to see collapse coming. A thought-provoking book containing not a single page of dense prose. Expect demand from civic- and history-minded readers.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Brad Hooper

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–This powerful call to action should be read by all high school students. Diamond eloquently and persuasively describes the environmental and social problems that led to the collapse of previous civilizations and threaten us today. The book's organization makes researching particular regions or types of damage accessible. Unfamiliar words are defined, and mention of a place or issue that has been described in greater detail elsewhere includes relevant page numbers. Students may become impatient with the folksy Montana fishing stories in part one, but once the fascinating account of the vanished civilizations begins, readers are taken on an extraordinary journey. Using the Mayan empire, Easter Island, the Anasazi, and other examples, the author shows how a combination of environmental factors such as habitat destruction, the loss of biodiversity, and degradation of the soil caused complex, flourishing societies to suddenly disintegrate. Modern societies are divided into those that have begun to collapse, such as Rwanda and Haiti; those whose conservation policies have helped to avert disaster, such as Iceland and Japan; and those currently dealing with massive problems, such as Australia and China. Diamond is a cautious optimist. Some of his most compelling stories show how two groups of people sharing the same land, such as the Norse and Inuit in Greenland, can end up in completely different situations depending on how they address their problems. The solutions discussed are of vital importance: how societies respond to environmental degradation will determine how teens will live their adult lives. As Diamond points out, in a collapsing civilization, being rich just means being the last to starve. Black-and-white photos are included.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　–Kathy Tewell, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Book Dimension

length: (cm)21.7 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)14

读后感

花了两个星期，非常细致地读完了戴蒙德的这两本书，感触很深。以前都是在整理完读书笔记后，才写书评的，但是这次却觉得心中有很多话迫切地向说出来。 《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》主要是从环境角度阐述了人类历史发展过程中的一些看似细微却影响重大的自然因素，指出，这些自然因素...  

【读品】罗豫/文 虽然环境问题已成为中国经济高速发展的并发症，赚钱、买房、买车、炒股依旧是中国人日常交流的话语磁场所在。环境问题，最多是饭桌上的“季节性冷盘”，春天沙尘肆虐、夏天洪水汹汹、冬天千里冰封的时候才会得到公众不愉快的关注。说到底，在公共水龙头前贴上...  

北極圈的永凍層逐漸融解，海水淹沒屯墾區，居住在那兒的居民被迫遷村；阿爾卑斯山的雪線不斷上升，群山面臨分崩離析的危機，一千四百萬人的生存倍受考驗；持續砍伐亞馬遜雨林，五十年後將有百分之六十的林地消失，意即在地球上維持人類生存的氧氣將減少五分之一。 以上三件事...  

记得中学的时候看到一篇散文。作者说参与考古挖掘，在一片黄沙中掘出两具紧紧拥抱在一起的尸骨。这两具尸骨一男一女。现在已经无从得知他们生前的故事，但那很可能是荡气回肠的悲剧。 他们也许还属幸运，毕竟时光定格了他们永不分离。“可怜无定河边骨，犹是春闺梦里人。”这14...  

这本书看完以后立刻借给老妈了，而她看书又很慢。因此，写书评的计划就一拖再拖。现在决定写一篇不翻书确认的书评，了结心思。 从书的主旨来讲的，作者可算开宗明义，一上来就把他总结的、导致社会崩溃的生态破坏、气候变化、强敌在侧、友邻衰弱、对策失误等五大因素列出。全...  

用户评价

太长，读的好累

A great piece of work, although the tediousness almost wears me out, after all my all time favorite remains to be his Guns, Germs, and Steel. ... His versatility makes me feel like he’s primarily an anthropologist, lol.

颇为有趣的一本书，旁征博引而又不晦涩，很好的读物

Refreshed my understanding on environmental issues.

Refreshed my understanding on environmental issues.