So I'm looking to brush up on my history and after stumbling across the post in this forum eviscerating Justin Diamond and his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, I am now reluctant to pull the trigger on this:
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition
Is this book as poorly constructed as Guns, et. al.? Obviously it's a little more of a biology book with history in it, than a history book with biology in it...
It is not well constructed. Joseph Tainter has written about collapse in general with his 2006 article really addressing the issues presented in Diamond's book. Then in 2009 a group of archaeologists and historians came together to publish an edited volume critiquing Diamond's book. Tainter's article is behind a paywall, unfortunately, but the book is much more accessible if you are interested.
I discuss both of these article briefly in the context of the Maya collapse in this post.
Tainter, Joseph A. "Archaeology of overshoot and collapse." Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 35 (2006): 59-74.
McAnany, Patricia A., and Norman Yoffee, eds. Questioning collapse: human resilience, ecological vulnerability, and the aftermath of empire. Cambridge University Press, 2009.