Diamond...doesn't appear to have the highest of hopes for the fate of the U.S., but that's no reason to skip Upheaval, his fascinating look at how countries have dealt with nationwide crises, and what we might be able to learn from them. The idea behind Upheaval is a captivating one that draws from both history and psychology ... Perhaps most interesting—and chilling—is Diamond's chapter on Chile, a country with 'a long history of democratic government' until 1973, when its government was seized by its armed forces in a coup ... Although its subject matter is intrinsically distressing, Upheaval is not a gloomy or pessimistic book. Diamond is neither a cheerleader who promises that America, because it's somehow special, is incapable of dying, nor a doomsayer ... Diamond is an endlessly engaging writer, and the experience of reading Upheaval is similar to taking a college course from a professor who's as charming as he is polymathic. He's gifted at explaining the context of various national crises, providing fascinating background information (and sometimes personal anecdotes) without ever getting distracted by tangents. Diamond has an impressive range of knowledge ... Anyone with an interest in history, psychology, or the future of the country will find much to admire in Upheaval, and Diamond's take on how our nation might navigate its path forward is fascinating reading for anyone anxious about the state of the republic today.

...a lively, though engagingly idiosyncratic, look at the forces that shape nations and the way leaders behave when faced with the inevitable consequences of those forces. And before he’s finished he focuses on the United States and the challenges of our time. Spoiler alert: He’s more optimistic than readers may expect in the face of climate change, political paralysis, public incivility, and low voter turnout ... The great pleasure of this volume is the random intriguing insights peppered throughout these cases ... Some readers may regard Diamond as a chronic worrier—he deplores barriers to voting, the high cost of elections, social and financial inequality, decreased economic mobility, the decline in investment in education, and huge variations in educational opportunities across the states, races, and classes. But no. He’s actually an optimist, though of a curmudgeonly sort.

So I dug into Diamond’s latest, intrigued by his thesis that the way individual humans cope with crisis might teach something to countries. Then, before long, the first mistake caught my eye; soon, the 10th. Then graver ones. Errors, along with generalizations, blind spots and oversights, that called into question the choice to publish. I began to wonder why we give some people, and only some, the platform, and burden, to theorize about everything ... The Framework is driving the inquiry here, and everything stands at its service ... Sometimes the book feels written from a drying well of lifelong research rather than from the latest facts ... A remaining problem with Upheaval is one that cannot be fact-checked away, but, happily, is already being fixed across the world of letters. Until recently, in much of American life, and American writing, the default setting of human being was white and/or male. Today so much writing shatters this default, complicates the point of view. And Upheaval reminds us why that matters.

Upheaval examines such large countries as the United States, Finland, Japan, and Chile, and mainly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through them, Diamond hopes to show how nations have made it through destabilizing crises. But what we see instead is how poorly suited his approach—honed on nonindustrial and isolated societies—is for large, connected ones in an age of globalization ... What remains is a 'narrative survey,' speculative and loose ... The problem isn’t merely that Diamond has jettisoned statistical analysis. It’s that the crisp explanations that populated Guns, Germs, and Steel...are missing ... Diamond isn’t noticeably wrong in these judgments, vague as they are; it’s just that he adds little to our understanding by them ... There are joys here, particularly in Diamond’s historical accounts. He narrates Finnish guerrilla tactics against the Red Army in World War II with infectious glee ... He applies a similar gusto to the tale of nineteenth-century Japan ... Yet the closer he gets to his own time and place, the less brightly this crazy Diamond shines ... the meandering accounts that follow offer mainly middle-class nostrums and bland conventional wisdom ... Diamond seems unsteady in a world illuminated by iPhone screens. Complex countries, global economies, and international politics strain his 'nations are like people' view of things.

Upheaval offers an intriguing drive-by tour of how seven countries have dealt with major challenges over the past century and a half. But full warning: It’s also a distinctly odd work—part history lesson, part memoir and part self-help manual ... I found Diamond’s discussion of Finland’s plight to be riveting, perhaps because I knew so little about the country ... But Diamond’s therapy-speak seems less convincing when he turns his attention to how Australia managed to leave behind its white British roots and become a multiethnic society with close ties to nearby Asian countries. That transition seems less like a crisis and more like a natural evolution of a prosperous, educated society ... The therapy approach is even less convincing when it comes to Chile’s restoration of democracy after the Pinochet years. Forget psychobabble ... Diamond’s attempt to explain national crises as enlarged versions of personal crises winds up working about as well as an attempt to go in the opposite direction and explain individual psychology in terms of national politics and economics. Many of his points seem only intermittently true ... Diamond’s self-help manual for nations is an entertaining read. But, like most self-help books, it seems more glib than profound.

Here is the final twist to an extraordinarily eclectic academic career, which began with physiology and seems to be concluding with pop psychology: Diamond has reinvented himself once again, this time as shrink to the nations ... [Diamond's] approach is...narrative and comparative. The book is not archivally researched, but a work of synthesis based on secondary sources. There is nothing wrong with any of that. It is only when Diamond organizes his material by importing insights from the realm of personal experience ...that the historian winces ... Now, there is much in Upheaval to enjoy, especially the more autobiographical passages which radiate Diamond’s own insatiably curious, enquiring, genial personality. But there is a fundamental, inescapable problem with this book, which is that it runs counter to the obvious reality that nation states are not that much like individual people ... In short, it is surely a giant category error to expect nation states to behave like humans – as if one tried to extrapolate the incidences of pile-ups and traffic jams on motorways from an understanding of the internal combustion engine. At best, Diamond’s book is a sustained metaphor. But precisely because complex polities are not subject to the same constraints as individual people, it is a misleading one. It is even more misleading when, in a final chapter, Diamond attempts to apply his framework to the entire human race and planet ... The reader’s confidence is further undermined by a number of errors.

Diamond goes to great lengths to show that, despite the enormous differences between individuals and nations, his approach can be usefully applied to diagnose and solve national crises. But are nations and individuals in the throes of crisis really comparable? His analysis fails to persuade ... Though the analysis stumbles, the virtues of Diamond’s storytelling shine through. Ignore his attempts to force the therapeutic 12-step onto history. Ignore also his correct but unsurprising musings about the dangerous threats facing humanity (nuclear weapons, climate change, resource depletion and inequality ). Instead, let this experienced observer with an uncanny eye for the small details that reveal larger truths take you on an expedition around the world and through fascinating pivotal moments in seven countries. Upheaval works much better as a travelogue than as a contribution to our understanding of national crises.

The stark conclusion that emerges from his book...is that while individuals often learn from crisis, countries seldom do ... In perhaps the most fascinating section of the book, Diamond identifies the accelerating deterioration of compromise, not only in the political sphere but in all areas of life, as the most ominous problem threatening American society today ... Rather than easing our anxieties over the current global malaise, however, Diamond’s book serves as a warning that a return of the ghosts of history can be a very real consequence of our collective refusal to learn.

... goes well beyond the personal, drawing on a vast amount of reading and research ... Mr. Diamond tries to be systematic throughout, interrogating his case studies according to a list of criteria that, he believes, support a comparison across cultures and centuries. But his approach is also idiosyncratic and eclectic, with fascinating details and stories offered up along the way ... plenty of food for thought and many provocative speculations. Mr. Diamond is sometimes a little too inclined to take his case studies at their word ... The author is also prone to exaggerate the power of Germany ... It is thus a pity that, beyond a brief, tantalizingly upbeat assessment of the U.K.’s prospects after Brexit, Mr. Diamond doesn’t discuss Britain and its past very much. His 'crisis' framework could usefully be applied.

Diamond’s legion of fans will already be disposed to endorse this level of solipsism. Newcomers to his customary methods might ask some fairly simple questions. Can personal crisis indicators be in any useful way to study the upheavals of nations? Can 30 pages be enough to do more than skim the surface of any of these epic events? Does the random fact of living in a country—far removed from the deliberations of its government or military—impart any extra sympathy or knowledge? And if the answer to each of those questions is a weary, exasperated ‘no,’ the further question, 'Can Upheaval have anything to offer?' will likewise suggest itself.

Only the most obtuse reader of his latest book, on national resilience, could miss the signs and portents with which it is studded ... Diamond’s checklist of factors that underpin national resilience is, however, of limited utility, as he recognizes, when it comes to the problems faced by our small blue planet ... Diamond has grounds for extreme pessimism, but he also sees some hopeful signs ... Diamond’s methods—drawing direct parallels between personal and national trauma, and between the psychology of individuals and character of nations—are not those practiced by historians, who tend to emphasize the particularity of circumstance and the intricate unrepeatability of events. Diamond nonetheless plots in counterpoint the various predicaments he discusses, alert, in as non-deterministic a mode as he can manage, to the open textures of historical possibility. The prophet spares us chiseled commandments, but we have been warned.

...Upheaval speeds through several case studies of countries that have suffered traumatic events ... These episodes can run refreshingly counter to conventional wisdom ... historical chapters are followed by several long advice chapters. Although he may be right, there’s nothing new about his admonitions to fix gender inequality in Japan, the decay of democracy in the U.S., or climate change in the world. Perhaps most interesting to longtime readers will be Diamond’s own tale of personal crisis ... If only nations could be as agile.

...Upheaval...is a well-documented comparative study exploring how nations can change for the better through the sort of coping mechanisms we typically associate with personal trauma. It may seem a stretch, but Diamond’s blend of logical analysis and historical narrative amounts to more than just a self-help manual for sovereign states. By detailing how seven countries faced past upheavals with self-appraisal and bold adaptation, Diamond makes an erudite case for learning from history and applying its lessons to our global future ... But Diamond’s decision not to include any discussion of the UK’s Brexit upheaval or the polarization of America in the Trump era leaves a gap in his political science. Addressing those overweening realities of the Western world, on even a basic level, would have rounded out his thesis in timelier fashion. As it stands, the book’s prescription for success is rooted in a past that seems to recede more rapidly each day. Even so, Diamond’s careful analysis of how nations have coped with their trauma can point toward solutions for stubborn issues—such as income inequality, immigration and climate change—that bedevil the future.

In Guns, Germs, and Steel and later in Collapse, Diamond...demonstrated the ability to extract answers from unwieldy masses of information and apply it to understanding questions of today. This newest offering complements the former two and completes the author's trilogy by focusing on the resources six nations drew on to deal with crisis ... Diamond is a master at explicating matters of pressing importance. His earlier books garnered a vast readership, and there will be equal demand for this one, too.

Each case history reveals salient points about selective change, or its absence, among nations, laying the groundwork for what Diamond really wants to talk about: the future of the U.S. as a nation and of the planet as a place to exist. It’s a cogent discussion and a plea for perspective; some of today’s crises have been weathered before ... in spite of its rather formal presentation, this is notably a more personal work for Diamond, who shares his experience with each country studied, folding in anecdotes and impressions.

...[a] rich but unfocused treatise in comparative history ... Diamond offers far-ranging, erudite, lucid accounts of historical cruxes, spiced by sharp-eyed personal observations—he seems to have been everywhere—of national characters and quirks. Unfortunately, his social-psychological framework lacks the concise explanatory power of his books on geographical and environmental influences on history; his factors often seem like squishy truisms that fit any happenstance without proving much beyond the importance of realism and adaptability. The result is a suite of notable historical retrospectives that point in no singular direction.

Diamond astutely examines seven turning points in the history of the world ... Vintage Diamond; of a piece with Collapse (2004) and likely to appeal to the same broad audience.