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Even a Pulitzer Prize winner needs a good editor Despite the NYT's reviewer's attempt to simplify "Collapse" beyond recognition, I found this to be a well-argued and sophisticated analysis of the dynamics of societal responses to environmental stress. But it takes a real effort and dedication to get through it. It would be unfortunate if the book's faults caused its significance to be buried. A summary here would be neither necessary (see other reviews) nor adequate. But where "Guns, Germs and Steel" was about as well-honed as a 3000-year survey could be, "Collapse" is often baggy and self-indulgent. The author's penchant for list-making is given free rein. The overuse of the first-person makes you suspect a personal agenda or two of being at play. (Diamond admits that he has chosen the first and last chapters of his case studies not because that arch best illustrates his theme, but because he loved Montana as a teenager and now, late in life, has come to love Australia.) The two chapters on Greenland are repetitive. The effect is frequently wearisome, and I have to admit to skipping over the last part of many of the lists as well as the last part of the book itself. That is, I suspect, my loss. Chunks of insight are embedded everywhere in "Collapse" and I probably missed another handful in the 20 or so pages I merely skimmed. Take the author's description of the comparative economics of oil and "hard-rock" mining: that's one of the best examples of how Diamond can deftly sketch the intricacies of a system while making it seem newly accessible to understanding. At its best, as it frequently is, "Collapse" gives us a new frame of reference for trying to make sense of what's happening in the world. But prepare yourself for a slog through some parts.