Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ( Audiobook)

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ( Audiobook)
mp3 | 978-0670033379 | English | 130 MB

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (also titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive) is a 2005 book by Jared M. Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles. Diamond's book deals with "societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses". In writing the book Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history.

In the prologue, Diamond summarizes Collapse in one paragraph:

“ This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.


Review:

Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.

Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling.

Download
hotfile | fileserve | filesonic

Richest Man in Babylon and The Magic Story By Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill, «Richest Man in Babylon and The Magic Story»
Publisher: High Roads Media; Unabridged edition (January 5, 2002) | ISBN-10: 1559276924 | ISBN-13: 978-1559276924 | Audio - MP3 | 29.6 MB

Two classic allegorical dramatizations about building wealth and achieving personal success
The Richest Man in Babylon
George Clason's all-time motivational classic comes to life in this audio dramatization adapted by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. It is the story of Akrad, a man of humble of origins; a simple tradesman who was widely known to be the richest man in Babylon.
Regardless of who you are or what work you do, security, riches, and all that comes with them can be yours by combining discipline and imagination with these deceptively simple yet universally profound principles of saving and investing. You too can become the richest man in Babylon.
The Magic Story
Something was happening to all of Jay's friends-they were becoming self-confident, setting goals, and achieving success, and it was all because of a story that was being told to them by a mutual friend, Sturtevant.
About the Author
Napoleon Hill, born in poverty, became one of the world's most distinguished authors and speakers. Inspired by Andrew Carnegie, Hill was a confidant and advisor to businessmen and presidents. Among his associates were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and hundreds of other world leaders.


iFile.IT | RapidShare.COM | HotFile.Com

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century (Audio Book)

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century
by Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger, and Paul Boehmer (Narrator)
Harper Audio | 2010 | ASIN: B003S830HQ | English | MP3 56kbps | 438 Mb

The definitive story of Hollywood's most famous couple.

He was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance - often called "the marriage of the century" - was the most notorious, publicized, and celebrated love affair of its day.

For the first time, Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and acclaimed biographer Nancy Schoenberger tell the complete story of this larger-than-life couple, showing how their romance and two marriages commanded the attention of the world. And for the first time, in exclusive access given to the authors, Elizabeth Taylor herself gives never-revealed details and firsthand accounts of her life with Burton.

Drawing upon brand-new information and interviews and on Burton's private, passionate, and heartbreaking letters to Taylor, Furious Love sheds new light on the movies, the sex, the scandal, the fame, the brawls, the booze, the bitter separations, and, of course, the fabled jewels. It offers an intimate glimpse into Elizabeth and Richard's privileged world and their elite circle of friends, among them Princess Grace, Montgomery Clift, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, Marlon Brando, Rex Harrison, Mike Nichols, Laurence Olivier, Robert Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, Noel Coward, John Huston, Ava Gardner, the Rothschilds, Maria Callas, and Aristotle Onassis. It provides an entertaining, eye-opening look at their films, their wildly lucrative reign in Europe and in Hollywood, and the price they paid for their extravagant lives.

Download from Keepfile.com:
part 1 | part 2

Download from FileSonic.com:
part 1 | part 2