Book Reviews and Recommended Reading

Why would an Easter Islander cut down the very last tree on which their survival depended? Why would the Greenland Norse starve themselves to extinction while the oceans teemed with fish? What lessons can be drawn for Australia, or China, in the coming decades?

Dire title aside, this masterful story of the human race has one objective – to help us survive the future. The subtitle is the key, and the word that sings loudest is: choose.

Unlike an asteroid plummeting towards earth over which we have no control, Diamond shows precisely how we’ve created our environmental messes and, equally importantly, the means we have to resolve them. It’s not technology that will save us, he maintains, it is simply the political will.