NYT publishes a contrarian review of "Collapse."

Taken together, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse" represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation.

They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care.

All of which makes the two books exasperating, because both come to conclusions that are probably wrong.