Flutterby™! : Jared Diamond's "Collapse"

Jared Diamond's "Collapse"

2005-01-31 16:35:35.050467+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments

If you read and enjoyed Guns, Germs & Steel, you've probably been eyeing Jared Diamond's latest, Collapse. Gregg Easterbrook wrote a review for the New York Times which may or may not be worth reading, but Leo read that review and posted an expansion that's well worth reading.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Sociology Community Guns ]

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#Comment Re: made: 2005-01-31 19:33:00.637569+00 by: petronius

I enjoyed Guns, and I suppose I'll eventually get around to Collapse. However, comparisons of pre-modern civilizations to Modern ones seems a little strained. It also denigrates the effects of technological advances and communications, and some political choices to use them. For example, at the time of the Crusades the Muslim world was more technologically advanced than Europe, yet right around the eviction of the Moors from Spain things started to turn around. I personally think a major factor was that Europe invented printing and the Ottomans rejected it, mostly on reoligious grounds. In What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis, he shows that the Ottomans waited nearly 250 years before hsitantly allowing printing presses for secular books only in about 1724, by which time we had Columbus, Newton, and Shakespeare and were gearing up for the Enlightenment. No wonder things advanced more quickly in the West.