The Power-Up is the best way stay up to date on the gaming industry news. Click here to find out why!

We hope you love the books people recommend! Just so you know, The CEO Library may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.

This book has 3 recommendations

Bill Gates (Founder/Microsoft)

I’m a big fan of everything Jared has written, and his latest is no exception. The book explores how societies react during moments of crisis. He uses a series of fascinating case studies to show how nations managed existential challenges like civil war, foreign threats, and general malaise. It sounds a bit depressing, but I finished the book even more optimistic about our ability to solve problems than I started.

Yuval Noah Harari (Historian)

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.

Steven Pinker (Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, author)

Jared Diamond does it again: another rich, original, and fascinating chapter in the human saga, this one on how societies have extricated themselves from wicked crises-with vital lessons for our difficult times.

Amazon description

A "riveting and illuminating" (Yuval Noah Harari) new theory of how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't, by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of the landmark bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises.

Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals -- ranging from the forced opening of Japan by U.S. Commodore Perry's fleet, to the Soviet Union's attack on Finland, to a murderous coup or countercoup in Chile and Indonesia, to the transformations of Germany and Austria after World War Two. Because Diamond has lived and spoken the language in five of these six countries, he can present gut-wrenching histories experienced firsthand. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past?

Adding a psychological dimension to the in-depth history, geography, biology, and anthropology that mark all of Diamond's books, Upheaval reveals factors influencing how both whole nations and individual people can respond to big challenges. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal book yet.

Get this book on Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | iBooks

See more books recommended by

Bill Gates, Yuval Noah Harari, Steven Pinker

See more books written by

Jared Diamond

Sources

We'd love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment:

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.