Collapse: It's not a foregone conclusion

Jared Diamond's Collapse continues the same excellent tradition I expected after reading his earlier work, Guns, Germs and Steel. A series of fascinating societal profiles, from Easter Island to Norse Greenland to modern-day Montana, guide us through Diamond's central issues: Why and how do societies collapse, and how can we apply this knowledge to the benefit of our own society today?

The descriptive first half the book was more interesting to me than the later, prescriptive sections. I found myself inferring much of the later chapters' content from the allusions in the historical sections of the book. This doesn't invalidate his conclusions nor his recommendations to deal with them, which I found to be realistic and in some cases intriguing. (Who knew that some of the best nature preserves on the planet are in the middle of oilfields owned by the likes of Chevron?)

Overall, it's a very enjoyable book, with the only caveat being that the data geek in me would have liked to have seen more charts and tables to explore some of the premises he makes.