This book looks on the mysterious collapse of past civilizations and what this means for our future. Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, the book also shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.