| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.3

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. By Jared Diamond. New York: Viking, 2005, xi + 575 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $29.95.

As in an expertly designed documentary, such as the BBC would likely produce, a narrator, in possession of all imaginable information, meets archaeologists at different locations. He walks with them through apparently degraded and/ or pristine landscapes while discussing their meticulous work, such as radiocarbon dating, pollen analysis, and the results obtainable from investigating packrat middens. The conversation of the narrator with the specialists is at times purely speculative, drawing, for instance, wide ranging parallels between the Anasazi and modern human societies. But for the most part, the story seems founded on serious evidence. It also has a clear message, and the relation between historical case studies and the present, even the future, is simple, linear. This is in essence the rhetorical strategy employed in the well-written and at times compelling book Collapse. Diamond succeeds in turning history almost into a mystery novel, without, however, ever sacrificing its credibility as serious scholarship-based analysis.

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