Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Jared Diamond, a noted polymath, is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan's Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the international best-selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, Why Is Sex Fun?, The World until Yesterday, and The Third Chimpanzee, and is the presenter of TV documentary series based on three of those books.
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What inspired you to write this book? Was there a single
"germ" or
eureka! moment? Did you conceive of Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel
as companion volumes from the startor did the idea for Collapse surface
only after Guns was finished?
Ever since I was in my 20s and read Thor Heyerdahl's books about Easter
Island, I became intrigued by the collapse of great societiesas are
millions of other people. That interest has stayed with me over the last
forty years, stimulated by visits to Maya ruins and Anasazi sites and by
reading about other collapsed societies. I did not conceive of Guns,
Germs, and Steel and Collapse as companion volumes from the
start, but I had already written some magazine articles about collapses in
the 1980s, and the idea for Collapse was percolating below the
surface. After finishing Guns, Germs, and Steel, as soon as I came to
think about what would be the subject of my next book, the answer became
obvious: Collapse!
Both Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse are huge bestsellersand yet
both are fairly demanding books. Have you been surprised by their success?
How do you account for it?
Was I surprised...
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