"Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond

Ray gave me this book to read after I took a course on Norse mythology, which included some history. And I did, in fact, find the section on the medieval Norse settlement in Greenland to be very interesting. Many parts of the book were, in fact, interesting, and gave me new insights into the relationship between society and environment. After awhile, though, it became repetitive, and I totally skipped the last section, dealing with the present, which contained the motivations behind the mining, forestry, etc industries. Apparently there are some reasons for optimism, but I just couldn't take reading another sentence about self-interest outweighing the greater good.