Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of bestselling "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," will be giving a talk on his newest book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," on Friday, Jan. 20, 2006, at 7 p.m. at the UNM Student Union Building.
Photo: Dr. Jared Diamond
Diamond is universally regarded as one of the great minds of our time. He will discuss why some ancient societies collapsed, including the Anasazi, Easter Island, the Lowland Maya, Angkor Wat, and Great Zimbabwe, and he will use these examples to find important lessons for our own time.
This event is co-sponsored by The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, KNME TV, LodeStar Astronomy Center and Bookworks. The talk kicks off the Museum’s 20th Anniversary Celebration weekend.
General admission tickets for Diamond's talk are available at Bookworks, located in the Flying Star Plaza, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, (505) 344-8139, and www.unmtickets.com. Cost is $18.15. Price includes an autographed paperback copy of Collapse to be picked up at the event.
In addition, KNME-TV will also present a one-on-one interview with Dr. Jared Diamond on its weekly public affairs series IN FOCUS, airing Friday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m. and repeating Sunday Feb. 12 at 6:30 a.m.
KNME-TV will air an encore of the 3-part national PBS series featuring Dr.
Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Stell: A National Geographic Presentation – beginning Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 7:00 p.m. and repeating: Friday, Feb. 10 at 9 p.m., and again Sundays at 10:00 a.m.
The first episode, “The Crucible of Civilization,” proposes that a society's potential for advanced development was not determined by race or creed, or by time and experience, but by access to domesticated animals and cultivated plants.
Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu