The follow up to his previous work, Guns, Germs & Steel, Diamond focuses in COLLAPSE not on how and why societies develop, but how they fall apart. His thesis being that environmental change is primary cause of societal collapse, and often times those changes are caused by the society itself.
As with Guns, Germs & Steel, COLLAPSE is an explanation of a thesis along with numerous examples from human history. In his prior work his meticulous style occasionally bordered on the pedantic, in this book it becomes downright horrific. The book reduces to a series of disaster stories, describing and analyzing how entire civilizations fall apart. The stories are compelling, in the same way that train wrecks are. By the time you get to his discussion of modern civilization you are almost scared to see what he has to say.
COLLAPSE is as good a read, if not better than, Guns, Germs & Steel. It is not a happy book however. Some history books are great for curling up in a chair with a glass of scotch - by the end of COLLAPSE, you will be sucking gin straight from the bottle. It's fascinating, compelling, depressing and enlightening, all at the same time.
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