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A read to challenge your thinking After having had the emotionally scaring experience of studying Guns, Germs, and Steel in my high school Economics 2 class I had sworn off Jared Diamond. In that book he examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world - and while it was an interesting topic the course left a bad taste in my mouth. Five years later though I maybe it was time to give him another try - I am glad I did. It was with those reservations that I picked Collapse and while I was still on the fence for the first few chapters by the end I was won over! The stories that Diamond tells of Polynesian cultures on Easter Island and of the Vikings are so compelling because they are essentially our story; the cycles that they went through can be scene to be the same ones that we are going through. Saying that one is doomed to repeat history if they fail to learn its lessons has become a watered down saying but Collapse breathes new life into it showing the extreme similarities in the falls of civilization stretching the span of human existence. While one has to take Diamond's alarmism in light of pervious gloomy predictions by the likes of Thomas Malthus' 1798 essay on population and food production it should not be dismissed. It is impossible to read this book and not have your views and lifestyle challenged... the question now though is, where do we go from here?