"How Collapsed Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail" by Jared Diamond

The "collapse" mentioned in this book refers to a human society that has experienced a sharp decline in population, a sharp drop in political, economic and social complexity, and eventually disintegration over a long period of time. This is not uncommon in human history. Many magnificent civilization sites have aroused thoughts about the past. When people look back on the past, they can't help but wonder: Why do some societies prosper and continue, while others decline and eventually disappear in the long river of history?

In order to answer this question, in this book, Diamond continues his thinking framework and focuses on the relationship between ecological environment and human civilization. In the perspective of comparative historical research, Diamond uses Montana, the United States, which he is familiar with, as an introduction, and vertically compares the rise and fall of past societies such as Easter Island, Mayan civilization, Viking society in Greenland, and Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate period, and horizontally analyzes the development and difficulties of modern societies such as Rwanda, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, China, and Australia. These civilized societies are facing similar crises - behind pollution, plague, war, and famine, the riddled ecological environment is the prelude to the society's downfall, and the choices made by different societies to deal with environmental problems determine their very different outcomes. Based on this, the issue of how the ecological environment affects the fate of human society has moved from a grand and vague background role to the focus of the foreground. Some key information that was previously ignored by historical research has been extracted, reshaping people's understanding of social development.

Today, modern society is also facing crises - unprecedented population pressure, global environmental damage, and regional collapse that may quickly spread to the world. Is it impossible to have both economic development and environmental protection? Diamond sounded the alarm for us: our understanding and choice of this issue will determine the rise or fall of today's society.