By GREGG EASTERBROOK, New York Times, “Sunday Books”, Published: January 30, 2005
COLLAPSE
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
By Jared Diamond.
…”Guns [, Germs and Steel]” asked why the West is atop the food chain
of nations. Its conclusion, that Western success was a coincidence
driven by good luck, has proven extremely influential in academia, as
the view is quintessentially postmodern. Now ”Collapse” posits that
the Western way of life is flirting with the sudden ruin that caused
past societies like the Anasazi and the Mayans to vanish. Because this
view, too, is exactly what postmodernism longs to hear, ”Collapse”
may prove influential as well. …
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