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Outstanding
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Christian Science Monitor David Shi
Remarkable for its ambitious sweep and interpretive panache.
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Readers will find his book an enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature. [15 Nov 2004, p.49]
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Robert D. Kaplan
He takes a lifetime of research and, in normal English (free of academic jargon), leads the reader painstakingly where the media and intellectual journals have often refused to go.
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Outstanding
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The Onion A.V. Club Donna Bowman
Equally magisterial and sociologically compelling, yet often more entertaining and accessible than Guns, Germs, And Steel, Collapse tours the fall of human empires with a detective’s sense for telling clues and a prophet’s ear for apocalyptic phrases.
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Favorable
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Booklist Brad Hooper
A thought-provoking book containing not a single page of dense prose. [1 Nov 2004, p.442]
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Favorable
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The Spectator Jonathan Sumption
We have heard much of this before, although rarely with as much detailed information or dispassionate analysis.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Robert Hanks
The [previous] book was remarkable for the clarity of its argument, a quite immense breadth of learning and, importantly, sheer readability. Collapse has all the same qualities.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Noel Malcolm
This is an impressively wide-ranging and informative book, which begs some questions, but raises many more that deserve to be asked.
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Favorable
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The Economist
Since Mr Diamond is a restless traveller, a ravenous researcher and a sparky writer, the result is gripping.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Ronald Wright
Collapse is a better and more fair-minded book [than Guns, Germs and Steel]: more original, accurate and responsible, if sometimes overweight and repetitious. [15 Jan 2005, p.D3]
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Favorable
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The Guardian Jonathon Porritt
This pursuit of objectivity drives him into a depth of detail that on several occasions clearly impedes the narrative line he is seeking to develop.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Joseph E. Stiglitz
Though abuse of the environment is the common theme running through "Collapse," the book is replete with other fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes.
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Favorable
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The Independent A C Grayling
His account is crammed with absorbing facts drawn from ecology, history and anthropology in characteristic Diamond fashion - which is to say, highly readable, highly persuasive, and richly informative.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Troy Jollimore
Diamond's strategy of juxtaposition succeeds: The killings in Rwanda in the early 1990s, the desperate plight of the Haitians and the risks and challenges facing the United States in the present and near future are rendered all the more poignant and immediate against the background of various past human struggles against possible extirpation.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell
His discussions are always nuanced, and he gives political and ideological factors their due.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal Francis Fukuyama
While the individual stories are entertaining, a question remains as to how much light they shed on our current situation.
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Favorable
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Houston Chronicle Fritz Lanham
Ambitious, absorbing and discomforting.... Collapse is an important book that raises profound and troubling questions.
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Alfred W. Crosby
These accounts are based on extensive readings in secondary sources, on archeological records and on the written histories of the lands and peoples concerned -- and even on some original research, a rarity in publications aimed at the general public. [2 Jan 2005]
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Favorable
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New York Observer Rose George
It's to Mr. Diamond's credit that while writing about a 600-year-old societal collapse in a far-off Pacific island that shouldn't matter to us, he manages to convey a potboiler dread of impending doom. [27 Dec 2004, p.23]
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Mixed
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The Independent Toby Green
A curiously frustrating book.... Collapse is too simplistic, particularly in its view of other cultures. Its approach to history can be anachronistic; it can also be heavy going, and suffers from the impression that Diamond is trying to perform when he would really rather be addressing fellow-scientists.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Gregg Easterbrook
Taken together, ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' and ''Collapse''... are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past.... All of which makes the two books exasperating, because both come to conclusions that are probably wrong.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Fascinating but not always convincing.... This book remains, in the end, a messy hodgepodge of case studies, glued together with speculation and questionable analogies.
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Mixed
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London Review Of Books Partha Dasgupta
The concluding chapters of the book are devoted to speculations on the contemporary human condition, responses to dismissals of the concerns of environmentalists by sceptics, and a meditation on our hopes and the perils we face. Which is when the book skids and becomes a mess.
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Unfavorable
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Bookslut James Campbell Martin
The concluding section's brevity and once-over-lightly feeling are too bad, because Diamond makes many intriguing points.
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