Upheaval is Jared Diamond's latest (I'm pretty sure) book, and it has dropped to $3.99 at Kindle and Kobo US. Diamond is one of the few authors that I'll pay full price or nearly full price for their titles, but in this case, I was lucky enough to be able to borrow it from my library without too outrageous of a wait time (the library had bought a lot of copies...). You may recognize him as the author of
Guns, Germs and Steel; and/or
Collapse; and he also has written several lesser-known books as well.
Anyway, I enjoyed
Upheaval enough to buy it now that it is on sale - Diamond is also one of the few non-fiction authors that I like to reread. And it seems particularly timely now too - sigh!
Kindle US:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H2997W4
Kobo US:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/upheaval-12
Spoiler:
Quote:
A "riveting and illuminating" Bill Gates Summer Reading pick about how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't (Yuval Noah Harari), by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the landmark bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel.
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 yet.
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