Upheaval
How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'A riveting and illuminating tour of how nations deal with crises - which might hopefully help humanity as a whole deal with our present global crisis' YUVAL NOAH HARARI, author of SAPIENS
** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
Author of thelandmark international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond has transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, at a time when crises are erupting around the world, heexplores what makes certain nations resilient, and reveals the factors that influence how nations and individuals can respond to enormous challenges.
In a riveting journey into the recent past, he traces how six distinctive modern nations - Finland, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, Germany and Australia - have survived defining catastrophes, and identifies patterns in their recovery. Looking ahead, he investigates the risk that the United States and other countries, faced by grave threat, are set on a course towards catastrophe.
Adding a rich psychological dimension to the in-depth history, geography, biology and anthropology that underpin all of Diamond's writing, Upheaval is epic in scope, but also his most personal book yet.
'Fascinating ... I finished the book even more optimistic about our ability to solve problems than I started' BILL GATES
'Jared Diamond does it again: another rich, original and fascinating chapter in the human saga - with vital lessons for our difficult times' STEVEN PINKER
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drastic national course corrections flow from complex social psychologies, according to this rich but unfocused treatise in comparative history. Pulitzer-winning UCLA geography professor Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) examines episodes of national upheaval and change, including Japan's opening to the West after 1853, Finland's accommodation of the Soviet Union after they fought during WWII, and Chile's whipsawing from Salvador Allende's socialist regime to Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship to liberal democracy. He analyzes these developments through the lens of "crisis therapy," a psychological treatment program for trauma victims, identifying 12 factors that help societies rebound from crises, including honest self-appraisal, a strong identity and core values, flexibility, help from external sources, and freedom from geopolitical constraints. He also applies these factors to present-day crises, including Japan's population decline, America's political polarization, and climate change. Diamond offers far-ranging, erudite, lucid accounts of historical cruxes, spiced by sharp-eyed personal observations he seems to have been everywhere of national characters and quirks. Unfortunately, his social-psychological framework lacks the concise explanatory power of his books on geographical and environmental influences on history; his factors often seem like squishy truisms that fit any happenstance without proving much beyond the importance of realism and adaptability. The result is a suite of notable historical retrospectives that point in no singular direction.
Customer Reviews
Worth reading
3.5 stars
Author
American polymath now 82 years old. Regarded as one of the world’s leading public intellectuals. Originally trained as a physiologist, later a geographer, anthropologist, and historian. Now Professor of Geography at UCLA and still teaching. Multiple popular science publications, the best known of which is Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. His latest is Bill Gates’s ‘Summer Reading Pick.’ (Bill should get out more.)
Premise
In Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Mr D addressed what makes civilisations rise and fall. This one examines how nations can recover from crises by adopting selective changes, a coping mechanism more commonly associated recovering from personal crises, for which he uses himself as an example. How many people would regard the blips he describes in an otherwise stellar career as crises is moot.
Structure
Australia gets its own chapter along with Finland, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, and Germany. The US gets a couple (surprise, surprise), followed by an overview of current and potential global crises, with the inevitable pontification involved in such an exercise.
Was I convinced?
#notsure. I learned some interesting things about Finland and Chile, less about the other places. The US stuff and the global crisis stuff was all a bit yada, yada. As for Mr D’s take home message on Oz, I’m not sure. (a) Whitlam was the crisis, (b) Whitlam was the solution, (c) neither, (d) both, (e) what was the question again?
Bottom line
Not as good as Guns, Germs and Steel but worth reading.