2008-05-17 Fascinating stories - unconvincing conclusions

The book starts with a fascinating collection of stories about historical societies that have collapsed due to ecological disasters. These stories are very fascinating and include stories such as: Easter Island, The Norse in Greenland and the collapse of the Maya civilisation.

Later in the book Diamond moves on to describe moderns problems and this is where the book gets confusing. He has chapters about mining waste in Montana and erosion of soil in Australia. The country of Australia is not likely to collapse due to soil erosion (And Diamond admits that), so why did he put a chapter about Australia in his book about collapsing societies?

Summing up there are a lot of good stories in the book, and it does make a lasting impression, but the editor should have forced Diamond to remove those chapters that are not relevant to his central point. That could have made the book more trustworthy and clearcut.