Book review: Upheaval, by Jared Diamond
Upheaval is a non-fiction book, which uses a 12 factor framework for understanding how nations react to and cope with crisis. It includes factors like acceptance, national identity, historical experience, national core values, getting support from others and so on. The framework is quite similar to how humans react to crisis, but with modifications given how nations may be different from humans. And the author uses this framework to analyse some huge historical as well as future crises faced by or being faced by some major countries in the world. To be honest, I am not a a fan of the framework, as I found it was being force fit to each of the situations. And it got a bit repetitive too, when every situation was being discussed within the same structure. But I loved reading about how all these different countries dealt with these crisis, based on their own unique experiences, Reading about these events also enhanced my knowledge of global history, but from a different perspective.