Jared Diamond, COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (2006)

Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (2006) is ambitious, topical and thought-provoking. Although the book comes under the heading of history, its content is closely connected with contemporary environmental issues of sustainability, permaculture and humankind's use of natural resources. This linkage between the history of human societies and the environment has become more poignant in recent decades as the threat of climate change becomes apparent in our everyday lives. Today, climate change is a standard broadcast and online news story. How does Diamond define a ‘collapse’: a drastic decrease in human population and social, economic and political complexity over a wide geographic space over time.