Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
    Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
    Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
    Audiobook18 hours

    Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

    Written by Jared Diamond

    Narrated by Henry Strozier

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A brilliant new theory of how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't, by the author of the landmark bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. In his earlier bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma. In a dazzling comparative study, Diamond shows us how seven countries have survived defining upheavals in the recent past -- from US Commodore Perry's arrival in Japan to the Soviet invasion of Finland to Pinochet's regime in Chile -- through a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation, and he identifies patterns in the way that these distinct nations recovered from calamity. Looking ahead to the future, he investigates whether the United States, and the world, are squandering their natural advantages, on a path towards political conflict and decline. Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past? Adding a psychological dimension to the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics, and anthropology that marks all Diamond's work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book that is epic, urgent, and groundbreaking.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 7, 2019
    ISBN9781980024989
    Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
    Author

    Jared Diamond

    JARED DIAMOND has been the national baseball writer for the Wall Street Journal since 2017. Prior to that, he spent a season as the Journal’s Yankees beat writer and three seasons as their Mets beat writer. In his current role, he leads the newspaper’s baseball coverage. This is his first book.  

    More audiobooks from Jared Diamond

    Related to Upheaval

    Related audiobooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      3 Science Books Compellling Enough to Speak to All Readers

      Aug 30, 2017

      Bob Berman's 'Zapped,' Max Tegmark's 'Life 3.0,' and Richard Dawkins's 'Science in the Soul' succeed in turning science books into good summer reads.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Human History Gets a Rewrite

      Oct 18, 2021

      Human History Gets a Rewrite
      9 min read

    • Article

      Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

      Jan 21, 2020

      THE BEST WAY TO APPRECIATE Vaclav Smil’s latest doorstopper is to take a deep breath, walk across the room, and pick up the book from wherever it landed after being tossed away for the umpteenth time as impenetrable, incomprehensible mush. Because it

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Dawn Of Everything: A New History Of Humanity By David Graeber And David Wengrow Review – Have We Got Our Ancestors Wrong?

      Oct 18, 2021

      In the wake of bestselling blockbusters such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, that backwater of history – prehistory – has been infused by a surge of popular interest. It’s also proved an area of fertile promise for those

      3 min read

    • Article

      Smoke And Mirrors

      Nov 18, 2021

      Smoke And Mirrors
      7 min read

    • Article

      Condemned To A Life Sentence

      Oct 29, 2020

      “Isn’t it good to be alive!” WITH THOSE WORDS, in the wonderful 1971 film, Nicholas and Alexandra, Tsar Nicholas II opens the scene that will While being used to convey just the right pathos, as the viewer braces for the terrible actions of Revolutio

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Denial Syndrome

      Feb 13, 2023

      The Denial Syndrome
      6 min read

    • Article

      Who Pays The Piper?

      Oct 13, 2019

      Who Pays The Piper?
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Kindness of Strangers

      Nov 18, 2021

      The Kindness of Strangers
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Search For Answers

      Apr 30, 2020

      The Search For Answers
      12 min read

    • Article

      Coming Together

      Mar 27, 2020

      WE BEGAN PLANNING THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of TIME before any of us had heard the phrase flatten the curve, much less contemplated our own roles in the flattening. Its theme—getting out of silos and coming together as communities—is one we’ve been thinking

      3 min read

    • Article

      Coming Together

      Mar 27, 2020

      WE BEGAN PLANNING THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of TIME before any of us had heard the phrase flatten the curve, much less contemplated our own roles in the flattening. Its theme—getting out of silos and coming together as communities—is one we’ve been thinking

      3 min read

    • Article

      Robert C. Koehler: Real Change On A Living Planet

      Jan 7, 2021

      As the new year asserts itself — a year that begins in global lockdown and political shock-and-awe — an extraordinary question emerges: Are we on the brink of real change? Are we moving, politically speaking, beyond the small and stupid? Is the era o

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Case for Optimism

      Dec 12, 2016

      The average person, looking around the world today, might say things are very grim. It’s understandable. Headlines from Syria reveal devastation and human tragedy on an unimaginable scale. Billions suffer with too little, lacking basic necessities su

      7 min read

    • Article

      Creative Empathy In A Pandemic

      Mar 19, 2020

      One thing about a pandemic: It's inclusive. We cannot survive it, move beyond it, by protecting merely some people. We have to protect everyone. Of all the disruption, paradox and chaos that have been unleashed by the coronavirus, this is the most st

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hope From The Seed Of Trauma

      Feb 13, 2023

      Hope From The Seed Of Trauma
      10 min read

    • Article

      Radical Adaptation

      Nov 20, 2019

      We are at a moment in time when more and more people are beginning to panic over what seems to be impending civilisational apocalypse. David Wallace-Wells’s book, The Uninhabitable Earth unpacks the horrific implications of climate change. Greta Thun

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Upheaval

    4/5

    222 ratings20 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Good book and interesting case studies. Unfortunately it is quite repetitive. Going over the same points over and again throughout.
    • 5/5
      Excellent in every respect. I'm a fan of the author, having read GERMS, GUNS 20 years ago. I benefitted bgreatly from his synopses and global analyses. Narrator's ability contributed greatly. A mature work
    • 5/5
      Amazing book for lovers of history and life itself. Inspirational and concerning at the same time.
    • 5/5
      Should be a required history book for all the nations!
    • 3/5
      Good book for knowing the history of some nations such as Australia and Indonesia, where there are some disadvantages like misinformation about some countries.
    • 5/5
      Jared Diamond is one of my favorite writers out there. So much to learn from his studies.
    • 5/5
      Excellent interpretation of historical events and personalities to provide lessons to readers in understanding and management of a crisis
    • 3/5
      The book was good. However, the chapters dealing with the US did not provide any new insight or a potential forward path.
    • 5/5
      Surprisingly an easy read for it’s length. I knew almost nothing about all of the countries discussed but was able to relate with and understand the different stories presented in the book. Learned a lot!
    • 5/5
      Great book. The audio was very pleasant to listen.
    • 5/5
      The thesis of this survey of diverse countries that faced unique challenges. Using a structure of a therapy session and the process of positive emotional change, Dr.Diamond help guide me to understand geopolitical events.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating book, which draws you on into its argument based on just seven countries that have had to face challenging circumstances. This does not of course constitute any type of random or representative sample, based as it is on the author's personal familiarity with those particular countries. However the 12 "factors related to the outcomes of national crises" provide a generalized and fairly acceptable framework to look at other situations, especially the reader's own country and its neighbors. On this basis, it is quite evident that successful countries (and individuals!) have generally been realistic, self-aware, flexible, willing to learn from others, and so on. It should be fairly simple and straight-forward to develop this sort of understanding into best-option suggestions for each country's or institution's leadership.
    • 5/5
      Excellent presentation on how nation states have come to deal with upheavals. This, as with his previous books, requires careful and thoughtful reading. The reader will not be disappointed.

      I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair reading and review.
    • 3/5
      Too long winded.
    • 4/5
      Mr. diamond does get around, and in this book he is telling us about seven examples of countries and how they cope with large stresses. His analogies are drawn to the psychological stages and strategies of humans in the face of crises. The terms are slightly different than the Arnold Toynbee approach, but they are similar. Not much in the way of maps, but his approach is not heavily visual, but argumentative. The effort is thoughtful, and there are some short snappers to be thrown into arguments. A pleasant read.
    • 4/5
      For a select few nations the author lived in, he reviews crises that nation endured and how they responded and worked their way through threw them. He initially defined signs of crises.
    • 5/5
      A well researched and well written exploration into considering how nations come to grips with crises and adapt.The author uses personal crises and the way in which individuals manage them and seeks to see whether a similar process may play out with nations. He explores, in depth, nations which underwent crisis and which he has some level of personal experience - Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany and Australia. He then considers the present challenges for Japan, the United States, and the world in general; he concludes with his conclusions, questions, and how it looks for the future. The biggest challenge of the work is the cosmopolitan nature of the author and how he takes for granted most of the premises of cosmopolitanism. Such is not to say that he is wrong or anything of that sort; it just means that the work is unlikely to persuade a lot of people. Those who will agree will already share the general predisposition of the author; those who tend to be more nationalist or have skepticism about cosmopolitanism will not have their worldview sufficiently challenged by the portrayal of the author. A fascinating deep dive into the modern history of the countries discussed, and an interesting way forward to consider when it comes to nations and crises.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting book, combining concise and insightful historical essays with an effort to approach a general theory of how nations deal with crisis. It is not, however, another "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Mr. Diamond's 1997 masterpiece. It is probably unfair to expect that it would be; one great book is more than most writers can dream of. But the comparison is unavoidable, and it is not flattering to "Upheaval". The first part of the book, dealing with crises in six countries (Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany, and Australia) is informative and interesting. Mr. Diamond's discussion of the current situation in the US is less so, because it is so familiar. But the next part of the book, in which Mr. Diamond attempts to apply a psychological framework based on individuals in crisis to these various national crisis, was far less satisfying. I had the feeling that individual countries' experiences had been jammed into a checklist that did not, at the end of it all, tell me very much. Also, the lack of more than peripheral discussion of countries where crisis was NOT surmounted seems to me a weakness. Mr. Diamond explicitly acknowledges that he is working towards an approach to analyzing nations' experience, and that much of what he has done is intended to point the way for other studies. All in all, an interesting read, but not a compelling book
    • 2/5
      Starting with an analogy to individual crisis, Diamond argues that 12 factors determine how a nation responds to a crisis (mostly successfully; even the authoritarian coups he covers have their good sides, he thinks, especially since it’s unknowable whether you could’ve gotten the good—market-based economic reforms—without the bad, which does not seem like a reason to read history). The book did not cohere very well, but if you want capsule histories of big events in Chile, Japan, Indonesia, Finland, Germany, and Australia, and an overview of global warming and other challenges facing the US/the world, then I guess you could read this.
    • 4/5
      Diamond in the RoughAlbert Einstein spent the last half of his life trying to fit the universe into one elegant formula. He did not succeed. Jared Diamond is trying to do the same with national political crises in Upheaval. He has developed a list of 12 factors that show up in times of crisis at the nation level. The degree to which the nation deals with those factors (if at all) determines how successful it will likely be in dealing with it.The book exists at three levels: the individual, the nation and the world. The factors relating to their crises can be quite similar. The bulk of the book is on seven countries Diamond has had relationships with, having lived and/or worked in them. They are Indonesia, Japan, Germany, USA, Australia, Chile and Finland. They’re all different, and they all handled their crises differently. Some are still in crisis.A crisis is a serious challenge that cannot be solved by existing methods of coping, Diamond says. The examples include foreign invasion, internal revolution, evolving past previous bad policy, externalizing problems, and denial of problems.As for the US, Diamond sees it entering a crisis of identity and survival, riven by self-centered Americans who only care about themselves and today – right up to the top. Perspective, reflection and especially co-operation and compromise are absent from this crisis.These are Diamond’s 12 factors for national crises:1.National consensus that one’s nation is in crisis2.Acceptance of national responsibility to do something3.Building fence, to delineate the national problems needing to be solved4.Getting material and financial help from other nations5.Using other nations as models of how to solve the problems6.National identity7.Honest national self-appraisal8.Historical experience of previous national crises9.Dealing with national failure10.Situation-specific national flexibility11.National core values12.Freedom from geopolitical constraintsThe Chinese word weiji means crisis. It component characters are wei for danger and ji for opportunity. As in many clouds have silver linings. The example he gives first is Finland’s stunningly rapid industrialization when faced with $300M in war reparations after negotiating peace with the invading Soviet Union. Finland only had four million people at the time.Things get dicier at the global level. Looking forward to potential crises like nuclear winter and climate change, Diamond’s model shows the nations of the world, and in particular the USA, are not set, ready or equipped to make the efforts the model stipulates to come out the other side of the crisis decently.The structure of the book is standardized: a lot of history, some insight from personal relationships, and how the historical crisis fits the parameters Diamond set out. Mostly, it’s a lot of international history; interesting, and probably new to most readers. By far the best chapter is the epilogue, where he tackles the real issues: do national leaders make a difference in crises, and do nations need a crisis to act, or can they anticipate. The answers are sometimes to all the questions. Diamond has created an interesting matrix for future study, but its application to the real world remains a question mark. It was a good exercise, but of indeterminate value.David Wineberg