Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

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.