Also, it was by the author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" which was a fairly fast read despite being something you could hold open a door with. "Collapse", like "GG&S" is built around a single poignant and pithy question that one of Diamond's students asked in class. "What were people on Easter Island thinking when they cut the last tree down?"
They were probably blaming their government and/or some convenient sub-group of the population. It's a good question though. Diamond broke down every reason he could come up with as to why different societies collapsed at different times in history, and compared societies like Easter Island, Greenland Vikings and Anaisazi to the list. And, much like modern life, it comes down to Location, Location, Location. Try to live too far away from your required resources for living and you won't survive very long. And it pays to play nice with your neighbors too. Erik the Red apparently wasn't and things didn't go so well for his descendants.
But if you tend to spend resources that aren't really there, over-populate your territory and piss off your friends and neighbors, don't come crying when all of a sudden you realize that you can't sustain your societial structure. You should have read this book.
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