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Back Bay Books

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

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A "riveting and illuminating" Bill Gates Summer Reading pick about how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't (Yuval Noah Harari), by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the landmark bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel.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. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet. Read more


Publisher ‏ : ‎ Back Bay Books (May 12, 2020)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316409146


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 48


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 1.55 x 9.65 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #49,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #118 in History of Civilization & Culture #132 in Cultural Anthropology (Books) #179 in History & Theory of Politics


#118 in History of Civilization & Culture:


#132 in Cultural Anthropology (Books):


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Thought provoking and wonderfully personal
I noted that another reviewer likened Upheaval to Guns, Germs, and Steel and felt this was not the paradigm shifting book that G,G, &S was. I never got the feeling that Jared Diamond intended Upheaval to be a paradigm shifter. It is more a helpful analysis of where the US, other nations, and the world stand right now by an obviously thoughtful mind. I actually found the correlation of individual and national crisis response and management helpful. I, like many others, am profoundly concerned about the United States. It is hard NOT to miss the absolute refusal to engage and compromise across the aisle. One of the factors that has aided our political system is the federal aspect and the checks and balances that mitigate the "tyranny of the majority." A true democracy would be a tyranny of the majority. Our Constitutional Republic actually ensures that that does not happen. That is why political polarization and lack of compromise are such an existential threat to the system. There are many calls today for stronger moves towards "democracy" but we should be careful of what we wish for. As a highly pluralistic society, that might make things difficult. As I write this review, I write about the US, but I have also lived elsewhere and I think many of our issues are true in an increasingly global world where there is more movement than ever. I did have a couple of issues with Diamond's otherwise incredible book. Some of his narrative broke down for me because they were far too simplistic. I know he searches for the silver lining, but some of his reasoning felt a little pat and somewhat off. 1) He stated some of the causes and symptoms of our crisis, but he neglected a huge one--we are in the middle of a massive convergence of technological progress and the decline of the industrial age which has far reaching ramifications that I believe make people fearful at the most fundamental level. Sometimes, people can't really express it. It is a revolution of sorts. 2) He speaks of honest self-appraisal but that is something the United States has never truly done. That may be one of our truly weak spots and one that skews or national myth making. Part of the skew is reflected in the narrative of many of the candidates for the democratic election and Diamond skirted it in his narrative on immigration. "Every single American is either an immigrant or else descended from immigrants....Even Native Americans are descended from immigrants who arrived beginning at least by 13k years ago." This makes the process of "discovery" and "plantation" seem benign when in fact, it was quite violent. Invasion and conquest is never a benign process. We don't like to think of ourselves in that light, but that is the truth of the "immigration" matter. Indeed, 13k years ago is up for some controversy. There is some native scholarship that has thrown that narrative into question and if we want to go back far enough, we have all emigrated from Africa. But that does not help us to see ourselves as we truly are. The human condition is rife with tales of conquest and of big entities imposing their will upon smaller. Diamond speaks of this throughout Upheaval. It is our very flawed humanity that demands compromise. 3) He sometimes contradicts his own message. On page 381, he discusses our lack of resilience in the face of failure but shortly after, addresses the ways in which we have overcome our failures. This occurred in several places. I'm not sure why. It might be that need to find the benefit. 4) He discusses numerous aspects of the American system that weaken us where others have taken a different road. One being declining investment in human capital. He does correctly reveal that it is due to our federal system but he never raises the necessity to make that a part of the national system. I think there is more to it that he may have chosen to not address. We have a cultural bias against intellect that probably goes back to the "individualist" who helped "tame" the frontier. This may be another weak spot that he did not identify as clearly as he could have. It is one of the reasons libraries are becoming greater centers of community while many are dying in the US. He also speaks about venture capital in funding new businesses as a huge plus but he did not address its oligarchical qualities. Stanford, Harvard, other Ivy Leagues, etc. and their networks of good old boys profit from that funding. Others are deemed unworthy. Those were some of my main issues. In truth, they felt minor and they are fairly specific to the US although some of those issues occur in lesser or greater capacity in the world. Upheaval is a great book for some of the lessons learned and providing some insight into the path mankind could take towards survival. And that is what I think he is addressing--survival. All progress and all tools of civilization contain shades of opportunity and peril. We just have to see them for what they are. As we move further into this new era, perhaps we need to think of things differently. Perhaps our lens needs to change. Perhaps we are not asking the right questions. And perhaps that is why I felt like Diamond was skirting some of the issues. I tried to make them as concrete as I possible, but Upheaval is a wonderful platform from which many of us can intuit some of the questions we all need to ask. I think Diamond did hit the nail on the head when he outlined how many leaders institute changes that have already occurred within nations. The fact that many countries are floundering right now is perhaps a sign that their citizenry is as well. Can we seize the opportunities and diminish the perils by asking the best questions before it's too late? No matter how climate change is occurring is a pointless discussion. It's happening. How can we mitigate it seems more productive and it alone may be the greatest issue ahead of us. Unhindered progress will become irrelevant once climate change and its feedback loops become unmanageable. Thought-provoking questions, creativity, resilience, problem-solving, narrative/fiction creation, and compromise have always been man's strong suit and Diamond does a wonderful job of laying out the power of those qualities in his personal and professional insight into historical crisis response. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2019 by phil and liz frey
    • Book
It's hard to follow. Some books are easier to read and I know what's going on like Goosebumps. Other books like this one, hard but I'll read anyways.
Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2023 by Erica Johnson
    • Not his best work.
Upheaval is one of those books you wish you would have read after the author's other books because it gives you the feeling that those other books weren't so hot despite their praise and accolades. Written like a series of overwrought blog posts, Upheaval sounds better as a premise than it ever does in its execution — especially when Jared Diamond stops looking back and attempts to look forward. In some ways, Upheaval is really two books. One that attempts to reconcile the past by looking at Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany, and Australia. The Upheaval of all but one stems mostly from World War II (in one way or another), automatically making the book a much narrower lens than one might expect and leaving a much better discussion open for ancient historians. We could have all gleaned so much more from Rome, Babylon, Aztecs, the United Kingdom, etc. had Diamond applied analysis to any number of countries. More concerning is Diamond's personal bias, which tends to feel heavy as he assesses the various outcomes of the six countries chosen for act one. One of the most telling is his praise for Finland, which he loved living in, and its resolve to elevate educators and placate its neighbor Russia (a decision that Ukraine might not appreciate). Maybe so, but in cherry-picking his narrative, he doesn't tell you that Finland has outspent its ability to pay social security benefits, fails in preventing sexual assault against women, and continues to tighten immigration policy. I won't even touch on all the problems in his analysis of Chile as there are too many to list, having just read a few books that took a deeper dive into that country than Diamond did. I'll suffice to say instead: Alas, no country is perfect, and all of them rather face one upheaval after the next, which leads us to book two. Book two, while including a reassessment of Japan, is really dedicated to dismantling the United States by claiming it is in the midst of a crisis as defined by left-leaning policy (some of which may be right and some of which may not be right). His take on elections, inequality, education, climate change, etc. all lean in one direction, despite contradicting statements he praised earlier. In short, he often calls for a national or global referendum despite saying the United States' ability to test ideas at the state level before adopting them on the national scale is a strength (one we continually see weakened). The biggest issue in American politics today is books like these, pretending to be neutral when in fact, they only serve to help polarize the public even more — giving people the false illusion that they are in the middle when they are not. Case in point, Diamond presents the idea that voter ID is somehow wrong while praising countries that don't require it (despite the fact that those countries track the identity of their citizens even more stringently). In doing so, we're always back the right and left argument that one side says Voter ID is necessary to prevent voter fraud, and the other side says three million of 330 million don't have IDs, so we shouldn't ask for them. Really? There is a more neutral solution, you know. If we can go door-to-door for a census, we can probably get three million IDs printed and delivered to people who are likely already accepting federal aid. The same can be said for the so-called wealth inequality argument, which Diamond says will only be cured when more affluent people like himself feel less secure. Look, I get the argument of this point as framed by the right and the left. But why isn't anybody being more inventive in looking at this phenom in the United States? Maybe there comes a point when you have so many rich people that the super-rich just grows exponentially (a fact we all learned in grade school discussing compound interest) because money begets money. The more you have, the more it works for you. And sure, maybe that makes it less likely for the bottom 1 percent to reach the top 1 percent (although many of the richest billionaires are rags to riches stories), does it matter? Maybe climbing from the bottom 1 percent to the top 50 percent is good enough, especially in a country where the bottom 10 percent consumes as much as 32 times the amount that people in developing countries do. If anything, the real threat to economic mobility isn't what it is now but rather what people like Diamond want to enact, a system where experts flatten everybody out. In sum, I generally don't like to provide a negative review, but my general disappointment in the book delivering on its promise drew it out. Sure, I'm happy I read it to see someone like Diamond's perspective. He gives the reader plenty to think about. Just remember that this isn't the work of merely a smart historian, Upheaval is surprisingly political. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2022 by Richard R. Becker
    • Almost as good as previous books
While many of the analyses were comprehensive as best I could gather, there were glaring omissions in the history and current events of Australia that I found concerning.
Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2022 by Paddy

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