In the Pulitzer Prize winner Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations were able to dominate much of the world. Here he probes the other side of the equation to consider what caused some of the world's great civilizations to collapse, uncovering a pattern of catastrophe that occurs when societies squander resources, ignore warnings from the environment, and reproduce too fast.

"A lucid writer with an ability to make arcane scientific concepts readily accessible to the lay reader, [the author's] case studies of failed cultures are never less than compelling."—NYTimes