In his new book Upheaval: how nations cope with crisis and change Jared Diamond traces how seven countries have survived defining catastrophes – from the forced opening of Japan to the Soviet invasion of Finland to Chile’s brutal Pinochet regime – through selective change, a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation.
Looking ahead to the future, Diamond sets out the gravest threats to world stability, and investigates whether the United States is squandering its natural advantages and on a devastating path towards political conflict and decline. Is this fate inevitable? Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past?
Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the seminal million-copy-bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was named one of Time Magazine’s best non-fiction books of all time, Collapse, a No. 1 international bestseller, and The World Until Yesterday, among other books. A professor of Geography at UCLA and noted polymath, Diamond's work has been influential in the fields of Anthropology, Biology, Ornithology, Ecology and History, among others. He has been awarded the National Medal of Science, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Japan’s Cosmo Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Prize Honoring the Scientist as Poet.
Professor Giles Atkinson is Professor of Environmental Policy in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE.
The Department of Geography and Environment (@LSEGeography) is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.
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