UCLA professor Jared Diamond, a geologist and anthropologist, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which explains why some environments fostered technologically advanced civilizations while others, lacking critical animal, plant, and geological resources, lagged behind. In Collapse Diamond shifts focus from environments as determiners of societal success to societies as determiners of environmental failure.

Diamond’s work as a director of the World Wildlife Fund has taken him to far-flung areas of the world, where he has witnessed ongoing environmental destruction as well as local efforts to prevent or repair such damage. Diamond believes mere technological progress won’t be enough to prevent a worldwide ecological disaster, but that that human ingenuity, community efforts, and wise governance could save Earth’s future.

Warrior-adventurer Erik, exiled from Iceland for violence, explored Greenland and founded a colony there in AD 984. His children Leif Eriksson and Freydis Eriksdottir explored Northeastern North America in AD 1000.

Leif Eriksson and Freydis Eriksdottir, children of Greenland colony founder Erik the Red, become Christians, converted the Greenland settlers, and in AD 1000 led an oceanic expedition west, where they discovered “Vinland,” modern Atlantic Canada. They established a colony there, traded and fought with local natives, and after 10 years moved back to Greenland.