Introduction : flight as fight / Leo Lucassen, Lex Heerma van Voss -- Runaways and deserters in the early modern Portuguese Empire : the examples of São Tomé island, South Asia and Southern Portugal / Timothy Coates -- Escaping St. Thomas : Class relations and convict strategies in the Danish...

What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture of Easter Island to the...