Skirting The Disaster Ahead

COLLAPSEHow Societies Chooseto Fail or SucceedBy Jared DiamondViking -- 575pp -- $29.95

Why did great civilizations of the past collapse, and how likely is it that ours will, too? University of California at Los Angeles geography professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond begins his 575-page response to this query by quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley's haunting poem on the faded glories of an Egyptian pharaoh, Ozymandias: By Christopher Farrell