Normally, books about evolution by people who aren't evolutionary biologists, are lacking some rigor. All kinds of assumptions are made, and many assumptions, such as inheritance, are ignored. This one was actually pretty good- the explanations for diseases are sensible hypotheses and are well backed up by data.
An interesting book about disease. I had never really thought about disease perhaps as a beneficial and therefore selected for traits.

VERY entertaining.

A very strange Christopher Moore book. All of his books are strange, but this one took a while to figure out. As always, completely worth it. Like all of his books, the characters are strange and lovable, the plot is convoluted, and everything ties together nicely in the end.
I especially liked the biologist character, and his relationship with the doctor. Good stuff.

I wouldn't have thought that an entire book about prion diseases-diseases caused by incorrectly folding proteins- could be that interesting, but this book surprisingly was. It starts in Italy, with a family with hereditary fatal insomnia, and moves around to cannibalism in Papua New Guinea and mad cow disease in Britain and America. It's also got some personality sketches on the scientists who work on prion diseases. I thought these went on too long and in a bit too much detail and some of the science was lost in them.
I didn't feel that I learned that much about the mechanism behind these diseases, but maybe there really isn't that much to know. An interesting book.

I read this book when I was in high school and met the author and the Oregon Author signing at the historical society. I was working with birds of prey at the time and had a strong interest in this kind of work.
I was able to appreciate this book in totally different ways now, since it's about her graduate work for OSU in Eastern Oregon. Many of her problems I recognized as problems I've had with field work, although not as much sexism as she recounts.
She does a good job of explaining about field work, but I felt some aspects were a bit idealized, like her results. Not that she isn't correct, it's just that science is never as clear-cut as she makes it seem.
Very enjoyable.

I've read this book several times over the years, since Dad gave it to me (birthday?). I love the writing, the story, and the characters- both animal and human. While the detractors say that the book reads too much like a list and contains too much that isn't about the birds, I disagree. I think that the point of the book is centered around the hawks, but is actually the entire nature in Central Park. All of the cycles, the animals, and the community of people who observe them. Who knew that one could find such a group in the heart of New York City?
I think that's the other reason I love this book- that it takes place in Central Park, a place I love. It feels like home to read this book.

What an informative and well written book! Now I must go immediately back to Central Park;-)

I was pretty glad to be done with this book when I finished it. Maybe I'm just too familiar with the subject to be interested in yet another layman version of the evolution story. I think most laymen would be rather bored with this book, though. Usually I'm better at sticking with it than most people, but this one was a struggle.

I couldn't get a good bead on this book. It was so strange, and I don't know that I understood the combination of family, sex, marine biology, and surrealism. Parts reminded me of My Cousin, My Gastroentrologist, another very strange book.
Maybe if there were fewer parts, fewer characters, less adultry, less NASCAR, less history hinted at, I would have been more in touch with the characters and felt more for them. But all of the characters are selfish adulterers, and I don't understand what they're doing or their relationships between each other.
I'm not sure what this book was telling me, other than the future is a scary place.
I did like the girl Nicole and her TWA pass.

Diamond does researchers of obscure stuff a big favour in writing this book. What "real world" value is there in a PhD's arcane studies into bird bones in middens on Easter Island or tree rings in New Mexico? Diamond scours this and many other kinds of data to build his theory about something really big - how and why some societies collapse. He also helps bridge a divide between the "real" and social sciences by using "real" scientific data to answer big social questions where controlled experiments aren't possible. For example, there were not two Easter Islands that we could use in a controlled experiment to explain why one collapsed and the other didn't. Instead Diamond uses a collection of like, somewhat different and really different cases to tease out a variety of factors at play. Finally, on this research theme, I thought it was pretty cool that he wrote a preface to explain his research design. I remember taking a course in research design in grad school. It turned out to be the most useful course I took, because it really drove home that discovery of truths or the creation of good theories is only possible through sound research, only made possible through sounds research design. Knowledge discovery is very rarely serendipitous.

Just 125 pages in. Looking forward to reading the rest...

Well, I'm finally done Collapse. Just want to capture first off what he had to say about his framework and cases for consideration. The first set of factors that cause collapse have to do with irreversible damages inadvertently inflicted upon the local environment by its inhabitants. The second is climate change, third is hostile neighbours, fourth is withdrawal of support from neighbouring or friendly peoples, and the fifth is how a society chooses to react to threats of collapse once it perceives those threats.

His first case is the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, what seemed to me at first to be a bit of a lazy choice - simply a place the author knew well. But it's a great choice, because he does plainly illustrate how what seems to be a picturesque and untouched place has in fact been suffered substantial damage when viewed through a long-view lens. One of the things Diamond does so well in this book and also in Guns, Germs and Steel is that he helps us think in multi-generational terms. So our temporal comparative perspective is 50 to 100 years as opposed to one year to the next. Especially after reading through all the cases he presents, where in all cases the process of collapse took centuries, when one thinks back to his first example of Montana, one is convinced that the destructive mining and logging practices, climate change and lack of political will to protect the commons over the last 100 years have indeed inflicted permanent damage. And if pristine Montana has been irreparably damaged think, about everywhere else in North America -- or the world, for that matter.

As an "environmentalist" he had some refreshing views. Again, emphasizing the long-term, he discusses the damages associated with invasive species and praises a volunteer in Australia who poisons foxes, "one of the area's most damaging introduced pest species." Another reason why the long view is useful is in determining proximate versus underlying causes. For example, a proximate cause for the fall of Rome would be barbarian invasions, whereas an underlying cause would be Rome's over-expansion.

Diamond uses good hypothesis testing to question the assumption that the Rwandan genocide in 1994 was essentially an ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis. He notes research that found that in some villages where few Tutsis lived, there was still widespread killing, but the violence was carried out by poor Hutus and directed at richer, landowning Hutus. Diamond makes the case that underlying causes of the genocide had more to do with world-leading population densities than ethnic tension -- ethnic hatred provided the spark.

One of my favourite passages in the book is on page 489 of my copy where Diamond says biodiversity losses of small inedible species often provoke the response, "Who cares?" -- to which he says "That response misses the point that the entire natural world is made up of wild species providing for us with services that can be very expensive...Elimination of lots of lousy little species regularly causes big harmful consequences for humans, just as randomly knocking out many of the lousy little rivets holding together an airplane."

Collapse takes the reader on an intriguing journey through time and around the world exploring a question essential to humankind: why do some societies survive while others perish?

Author Jared Diamond provides a thoughtfully nuanced response by examining past collapses amongst Polynesian, Mesoamerican and Viking societies, which he juxtopposes with contemporary cases such as Rwanda and Haiti. His answer, in a nutshell, is that overextended exploitation of natural resources is the recipe for disaster. Societies based on the intensive exploitation of critical natural resources--- notably trees, arable land, fisheries, and watersheds--- are profoundly vulnerable to inevitable fluctuations in the bounty of such resources.

Diamond makes a compelling case for more cautious management and conservation of resources by contemporary societies. He achieves this not by preaching or doomsaying, but by carefully laying out the facts of past and present collapses, so that mistakes in environmental stewartship need not be repeated.

All in all, an insightful book on environmental policies that, given the controversial nature of the subject, is written in an agreeably level-headed style.

Very interesting look at several disparate societies and how they each collapsed under their own weight through a combination of bad choices and bad luck. For example, the original Easter Islanders essentially deforested their island which led to soil erosion, which lead to the inability to support themselves by growing their own food. That combined with various weather cycles, the overfishing and hunting of previously plentiful bird and fish species, and finally, inter-tribal warring lead to the disintegration of that society.

A good book, but pretty heavy and difficult to push through. That being said, my standards for Jareed Diamond are very high because "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was an amazing book.

Although interesting, I felt like this book took forever to work through and by the end I had lost much of my initial interest. The premise is interesting and there's lots of good data to support it, although as a biologist I find it sometimes hard to swallow all of the social science conclusions.
I found it hard to not feel that Diamond has a huge ego from this book (not that he doesn't deserve to have a big ego, but still). Maybe references to one's own life are more acceptable in social science circles than science.

According to Jared Diamond's theory, societies'responses to natural disasters, whether sudden like volcanic eruptions or gradual, such as rising sea levels or drought determine if the society continues or falls into collapse. An interesting read.

This autobiography by a neurobiologist and Nobel laureate was more interesting than I initially thought it was going to be. It was an interesting combination of scientific explanations and theories and his personal history. Sometimes this book annoyed me- which type of book was he trying to write?- and I didn't really see the connection between being kicked out of one's apartment by Nazi's and becoming a neurobiologist. That felt forced, but the memoirs broke up the heavier science stuff a bit so the book was very easy to read.
I just can't get all that interested or worked up about how the brain works. I know it's a scientific field with mass appeal to the general public, but I found myself glossing over the nitty-gritty in this book.
Overall, well-written and interesting.