Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn, long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat?

Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Collapse also shows how, unlike our ancestors, we can benefit from our knowledge of the past - and learn to be survivors.