Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond includes four sets of studies. Seven chapters discuss some of the clearest, most familiar, most striking examples of past collapses: the ends of Polynesian societies on Henderson and Pitcairn Islands, where everybody either did abandon the island or else ended up dead; the end of the Viking settlements on Greenland, which similarly disappeared completely; the disappearance of Anasazi settlements in desert areas of the U.S. Southwest; the decline and abandonment of Classic Maya cities in the Southern Maya lowlands, while Maya cities survived outside those southern lowlands; and the decline of Easter Island’s Polynesian society, famous for erecting giant stone statues.

After Spaceship Earth
An expansive look at the contemporary artists confronting, challenging, and reimagining R. Buckminster Fuller's techno-utopianism to envision sustainable futures Architect and designer R. Buckminster Fuller's (1895-1983) concept of "Spaceship Earth," one of the most...