Big, wildly ambitious, provocative, this is Jared Diamond at his best. He tackles nothing less than the history and fate of civilization in this compelling book in which he offers case studies, present and past, of societies that work and societies that do not. He devotes 100 carefully reasoned pages, for example, to the fate of the Norse settlements in Greenland (climatic change, Inuit) and another big section on Easter Island (deforestation, hubris). It's a fitting follow-up to his Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel.  (GEN324, $18.00)

Climate Change
Best of 2005