Thursday, May 16, 2019
8pm

An Evening with
Jared Diamond

discussing his book,
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Aratani Theatre
Japanese American Cultural & Community Center
244 S. San Pedro Street
Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90012

PURCHASE TICKETS
$75.00 first three rows (includes book)
$55.00 orchestra section (includes book)
$45.00 balcony section (includes book)
$20.00 balcony
 

Jared Diamond, a noted polymath, is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan’s Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the international best-selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, Why Is Sex Fun?, The World until Yesterday, and The Third Chimpanzee, and is the presenter of TV documentary series based on three of those books.

“A riveting and illuminating tour of how nations deal with crises — which might hopefully help humanity as a whole deal with our present global crisis.”―Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

In his earlier bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final book in this monumental trilogy, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change — a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma. 

In a dazzling comparative study, Diamond shows us how seven countries have survived defining upheavals in the recent past — from US Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan to the Soviet invasion of Finland to Pinochet’s regime in Chile — through a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation, and he identifies patterns in the way that these distinct nations recovered from calamity. Looking ahead to the future, he investigates whether the United States, and the world, are squandering their natural advantages, on a path towards political conflict and decline. Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past? 

Adding a psychological dimension to the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics, and anthropology that marks all Diamond’s work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book that is epic, urgent, and groundbreaking.