Upheaval
Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

I feel very lucky to work with my wife, and not just because I get to spend extra time with her. Melinda’s way of looking at the world makes me better at my job. Jared Diamond says he owes the idea for his new book Upheaval to his wife, Marie Cohen, who’s a psychologist. Jared is already a polymath.......more

”An example of presumed lack of models is provided by the U.S. today, for which belief in American exceptionalism translates into the widespread belief that the U.S. has nothing to learn from Canada and Western European democracies: not even from their solutions to issues that arise for every countr......more

There is a large body of research and anecdotal information, built up by therapists, about the resolution of personal crises. Could the resulting conclusions help us understand the resolution of national crises?========================================Successful coping with either external or......more

This book explains how six countries historically dealt with their own deep crisis and upheaval. Jared believes these six stories will help us solve any present or future U.S crisis or upheaval. He begins in Finland discussing the huge mobilization of Finns (1/6 of the population) and their fierce r......more

Oddly enough, after the introduction, I had a strange, trepidatious feeling that I was going to be reading a psychologically-based analysis of a handful of different countries and how they handled multiple historical crises. In one way, this might be fine if all we just wanted lite anecdotes, but thi......more