Upheaval; Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Kinuto Y. Craft (Jacket artwork). ix, [1], 502 pages. Further Readings. Index. About the Author. Small DJ tear noted at bottom back. Content includes: Part 1: Individuals; Part 2: Nations: Crises That Unfolded, and Part 3: Nations and the World: Crises Underway. Among the items addressed are: What is a crisis?, Dealing with crises, Finland's War with the Soviet Union, Winter War, Modern Japan, Chile, Pinochet, Indonesia, Suharto, Rebuilding Germany, Australia, Natural Resource Management, Political Polarization, Elections, Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change, Inequality, and Lessons for the Future. Upheaval reveals factors influencing how both whole nations and individual people can respond to big challenges. There result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal book yet. This is Jared Diamond is one of the deepest thinkers and most authoritative writers of our time--arguably of all time--and Upheaval proves his prescience in analyzing historical crises within nations at a time when national crises have erupted around the world. It is also his most personal work, sharing with readers his own crises along with his intimate familiarity with many countries that have experienced upheavals, and then drawing out lessons of crisis management for nations today and in the future. No scientist has ever won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Jared Diamond could be the first. Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991); Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Prize); Collapse (2005), The World Until Yesterday (2012), and Upheaval (2019). Originally trained in biochemistry and physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geography at UCLA. In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy of the world's top 100 public intellectuals. In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals -- ranging from the forced opening of Japan by U.S. Commodore Perry's fleet, to the Soviet Union's attack on Finland, to a murderous coup or countercoup in Chile and Indonesia, to the transformations of Germany and Austria after World War Two. Because Diamond has lived and spoken the language in five of these six countries, he can present gut-wrenching histories experienced firsthand. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past? Adding a psychological dimension to the in-depth history, geography, biology, and anthropology that mark all of Diamond's books, Upheaval reveals factors influencing how both whole nations and individual people can respond to big challenges.