Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed / Jared Diamond.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [529]-560) and index.

Prologue : a tale of two farms--Two farms--Collapses, past and present--Vanished Edens?--A five-point framework--Businesses and the environment--The comparative method--Plan of the book--Part 1.Modern Montana--1. Under Montana's big sky--Stan Falkow's story--Montana and me--Why begin with Montana?--Montana's economic history--Mining--Forests--Soil--Water--Native and non-native species--Differing visions--Attitudes towards regulation--Rick Laible's story--Chip Pigman's story--Tim Huls's story--John Cook's story--Montana, model of the world Pt. 2. Past societies--2. Twilight at Easter--The quarry's mysteries--Easter's geography and history--People and food--Chiefs, clans, and commoners--Platforms and statues--Carving, transporting, erecting--The vanished forest--Consequences for society--Europeans and explanations--Why was Easter fragile?--Easter as metaphor--3. The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands--Pitcairn before the Bounty--Three dissimilar islands--Trade--The movie's ending--4. The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors--Desert farmers--Tree rings--Agricultural strategies--Chaco's problems and packrats--Regional integration--Chaco's decline and end--Chaco's message--5. The Maya collapses--Mysteries of lost cities--The Maya environment--Maya agriculture--Maya history--Copán--Complexities of collapses--Wars and droughts--Collapse in the southern lowlands--The Maya message--6. The Viking prelude and fugues--Experiments in the Atlantic--The Viking explosion--Autocatalysis--Viking agriculture--Iron--Viking chiefs--Viking religion--Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes--Iceland's environment--Iceland's history--Iceland in context--Vinland--7. Norse Greenland's flowering--Europe's outpost--Greenland's climate today--Climate in the past--Native plants and animals--Norse settlement--Farming.