Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Jarod Diamonds Guns, Germs, and Steel was a worthy read. His next book Collapse had some things of interest but seemed to be a book written for the sake of writing a book. This one does not seem to be a written for the sake of writing a book, it is a book written for the sake of writing a book. One word describes this book for me, poor.

Presented in three parts and with part one I knew this was going to be a struggle. It contained the Prologue and first chapter. The author proceeding to give the reader rather mushy and long rambling reasons for writing this book on Upheaval How Nations Cope With Crisis And Change. Diamond had lived through his own personal crisis. He also had a relationship with the 7 countries discussed in the book. He thought that it would be useful to compare these countries crisis/upheavals to his own personal crisis/upheaval with some psychoanalytical process that individuals may go through when they are in crisis, write some history on each nation, add his local knowledge and hey presto! write an idiosyncratic book about upheavals. In my opinion the personal reasons for his career upheaval (that could have ended in failure but did not) are hardly worth comparing to a national event such as the death of perhaps millions in Indonesia in the mid 60's. Being discouraged over a scientific experiment or dying over a political upheaval? Hmmm! Go the scientific experiment any day of the week. This is just one of the many poor analogies through the text.

Part two contained the history chapters. It is very populist in the telling. When discussing Chile, the author based his assessment of Allende “...on the recollections of a Chilean friend of mine who knew him..” What? Did I read that correctly? He based all his writings in an entire chapter of a countries leader based on the recollections of a friend? Am I supposed to take this seriously?

I will add that the national upheaval of the 7 nations covered is hardly new territory. Finland from the demise of imperial Russia through to its relationship with the USSR, Japan from the Meiji Restoration, Indonesia in the mid 60's, the rebuilding of Germany after WW2 and Australia's so called upheaval of knowing who we are. The history telling itself lacked depth in terms of being historical accounts. I suppose that could be forgiven as this is a very long book but it was interspersed with personal anecdotal interludes that were nice in a way but just that, nice.
At the end of the chapters each nation was matched against 12 “Factors related to the outcomes of personal crisis” that matched 12 “Factors related to the outcomes of national crisis”. So for example factor 6 in the personal crisis is ‘Ego Strength' and the national will be matched with ‘National Identity'. Each nation was rated against the factor number in a meaningless discussion on how they reacted against the factor itself. I had no idea the connection between the factors for each individual nation when compared to the next nor understood the differences between each of the nation. It just seems to be, to put it bluntly, psychoanalytical BS.

Part three included a “what lies ahead” discussion on Japan, the US and the world in general and was far too long and rambled all over the place. Conclusions were the obvious or non-existent. Strangely the author kind of admitted just that by saying that his suggestions were “....absurdly obvious!” and retorts, with the obvious, that the requirements he has suggested for utopia are being ignored. Well yes and I too will ignore them if I ever have to read the Happy Doll analogy that made me laugh out loud when he discussed climate change.

For the discussions on the historical events pertaining to each country the author has relied on a further reading section. Fair enough but for the other areas of the book when stating statistics we get no footnotes and this is justified by another friend (Jared Diamonds many friends influence on his writings and opinions are very big in this book) complained that his books hurt their neck while reading them “....in bed at night.” So no footnotes as even though the last book had them online no one read them. That I am afraid may say a lot about his readers. If anyone reading this is offended don't take this personally but if you are not prepared to at least check consult footnoted sources in a book than how do you know the source of the information?

The lack of coherence in the narrative, presentation and the analysis is striking. Is this really by from the author of the very good Guns Germs and Steel? Populist writing at its worst. One star.