Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond

'Collapse' is an excellent read. In this book Jared Diamond tries to analyze what caused some of the major civilizations of the past to collapse and what can we learn from their failures. The book is divided into three major sections. In the first two sections Jared does an in depth analysis on several past and modern societies and the factors that led to their success/failure. In the final part of the book he tries to come up with some practical lessons that we can learn from the failure of past societies and how do they apply in today's context. Overall the key message from the book is that environmental destruction and unsustainable development are key reasons for failure of successful societies.

Jared picks an diverse set of societies from different geographies, time periods and cultures for this analysis. He has come up a 5 point framework for analyzing each of the societies. The key factors of the framework include environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners and society's response to environmental problems.

The book starts off with a detailed analysis of modern day Montana - considered to be one of the most natural and pristine states in US and analyzes some of the problems faced in Montana society due to mining, logging, non-native species etc. In the next few chapters he analyzes some of the past societies starting with Easter island where the natives had deforested the complete island while competing with each other to build more and bigger statues. He then briefly covers the collapse of Pitcairn/Henderson societies, Anasazi's of American southwest and Maya civilizations. This is followed by analysis of some successful societies like New Guinea, Tikopia and medieval Japan(Tokugawa era). He wraps up this section with detailed analysis of Vikings and Norse Greenland society which had failed after surviving for more than four centuries. Jared concludes that the Norse society failed due to its inability to adapt to the harsh Greenland environment, clinging on to unsustainable European lifestyle and last but not the least - not mingling and learning from the Inuits(locals).

The second section of of book covers about the challenges faced by some of the current societies and their outcomes. Jared starts off with the Rwandan Genocide and the factors leading to it. He then talks about Hispaniola and contrasts how the two countries of this island(Dominican Republic and Haiti) with the same history and environments had responded to their challenges differently leading to different outcomes - Dominican Republic is thriving whereas Haiti is on the verge of collapse. He goes on to analyze how the rapid growth and industrialization of China is impacting its environment and affects the quality of life if its people. Finally he wraps up the section with an analysis of some of the challenges faced by Australia and their response to it.

Based on the detailed analysis Jared reasons that past societies had made their disastrous decisions due to - Failure to anticipate, Failure to perceive, Rational bad behavior, Disastrous values and unsuccessful solutions. He sums up the current day scenario and details some of the actions taken by governments and corporates to protect the environment. He concludes the book on a positive note stating that the awareness of environmental issues is increasing and that governments and corporates are taking it seriously and acting on it. He is fairly optimistic about the success of our society.

Overall it was a very interesting read. Jared has done an excellent job by providing indepth details and doing a thorough analysis using a logical framework. The only comment i have is that most of the past societies he has taken are fairly small(except Mayas) and have fragile environments. However his point that environment destruction is a key factor leading to failures is valid and true. It would have been good if he had analyzed the failure of any major civilizations. Anyways this book has spurned my interest in studying the demise of major historic societies like Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indus Valley and Chinese civilizations. If you have any pointers to these pls let me know!

Book Review: The Age of Turbulence

Alan Greenspan is one of the greatest economists of our time. He was the US Federal Reserve chairman from 1987- 2006 during one of the longest bull markets in history and was a leading free-markets supporter. In this book he narrates his views, thoughts and experiences on the key economic events that shaped US & global economy for more than 6 decades!

The first half of the book talks about his learning as an economist and also about some of the key economic concepts. He starts off with his experience of 911 crisis and Federal Reserve's role in immediate aftermath. Subsequently he covers about his childhood, how he became an economist and his career progression first as an economist and then in the political world at Washington DC. He delves into some of the key economic events in the last 50 yrs like Recession in the early 80's, Black Monday - '87 stock market crash, End of Cold war/communism, Dot com boom and subsequent crash etc. In the first half he attempts to take the reader through his learning on how economy functions. In some places he gets little technical, it took me few re-reads to get some of the concepts and few were beyond me even after multiple reads :-)

The second half of the book talks about his views on the emerging global economy. What are the forces & factors shaping the new economic model of the world. He covers a wide range of topics like globalization and its impact, Energy and its relation to global economy, Rise of some of the developing economies - China, Russia, India etc, shifts in the world demographics and how it will affect the global power equation etc. He gives a fairly detailed assessment on the above topics. He finishes off the book with his predictions on where the world economy is headed in 2030 and beyond. Alan Greenspan's support for free markets and capitalism and his belief in the self-healing power of free markets has been the anchor for all policy decisions during his long career and it comes out pretty strongly across the entire book.

Overall this was a good read and very informative book. It provides an excellent overview on high level workings on the economy and some of the key economic events of the last century. I would recommend this book for folks that are interested in knowing about economy and how it functions. If economy, capitalism is the last thing in your mind this is not your book :-(

This book has spurred my interest in capitalism, economy and free markets. As a follow up from this I'm planning to read 'Wealth of Nations' by Adam smith!

Book Review: Go Green Live Rich by David Bach

This a neat little book by David Bach. We humans have been abusing our planet and over using the resources leading to rapid environment degradation and global warming. The pace at which this degradation is happening has accelerated dramatically over the last few decades threatening to change the face of earth and disrupt the quality of life for us and our future generations. It is our responsibility to preserve the earth and hand it over to our future generations the way we received it.

This book gives you 50 simple ways in which you can become more environment friendly at the same time save yourself a bunch of money. As a first step the author recommends that we start by measuring our carbon footprint and understanding the various factors that drives this footprint. You can measure this at earthlab.

Some of his key recommendations that are covered in this book are summarized below:

Driving Smart - Getting rid of at least 1 car and moving to public transport, upgrading to a hybrid vehicle, tuning your car to ensure that it operates in peak condition, using bio-fuel, checking pressure in tires etc.

Energy Smart - Use natural lighting to the extent possible, check & seal any leakages in your house, lowering heater/Ac settings by a few degrees, move to CFL bulbs, use energy star compliant devices, unplugging unused devices & if possible explore alternate energy options (Solar water heaters, residential wind turbines etc.)

Low Flow - Using low flow showers/taps, shutting off taps when not required etc.

Green Real estate - Get smaller house if possible(will lower AC/heating requirements), utilize recycled materials, planting trees etc.

Shop Green - Buy organic foods, buy in bulk, bringing your own reusable bag for shopping, reducing meat consumption, growing vegetables in your garden, buying recycled paper products etc.

Recycling - Buy and sell everything, get rid of junk mail and convert to online statements/bills etc

Make green your family value - Spend more time with family outdoors instead of in front of TV, taking volunteer vacations by helping social/environmental causes, send e-greetings & green gifts for holidays instead of paper greetings & gifts with lot of packaging

Green at Work - Bring lunch to work, think before you print, switch off light/computer before leaving for the day, telecommuting etc.

Green investing - Going green is the next biggest trend in the market, invest in green companies, start green business etc.

Give green - Donate for green causes, join green communities, Vote green etc.

A lot of the ideas given in this book are practical and implementable without a lot of effort/investment. The author has also provided lot of web sites, products and a whole lot of related information so that you don't have to search and figure out the details. While we may not practically be able to implement all the ideas, even if we can implement a handful of these ideas we will be helping our planet and at the same time helping ourselves by saving more money. Though each of these changes may not make a significant impact by themselves cumulatively they will make a big impact. As the saying goes 'Every single drop counts'. This book is very short and crisp and it has a wealth of information. I would strongly recommend this book if you want ideas for saving money at the same time would like to help & preserve the planet by going green.

If you do decide to buy the book pls go green and get an used book from online !!!