Julian Morris and I recently co-edited an edition of the interdisciplinary journal Energy and Environment, in which we commissioned a series of reviews of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Several of these reviews have now been posted on the contributors' websites, see my extended entry for links to these papers.

One broad problem with the book is that Diamond distinctly fails to discuss how institutions such as property rights have enabled (and continue to enable) individuals to address the 'tragedy of the commons'. Another problem is that the facts simply do not support many of his claims.

Julian Morris wrote an introduction to the series of papers - "Confuse: How Jared Diamond Fails to Convince" -- which highlights some of the specific problems with Diamond's analysis.

The institutional economist Wolfgang Kasper contributed a review which focused specifically on Diamond's lack of attention to how institutions (or their absence) underpin human decision-making - what Kasper calls the "software of economic development". Overview available here, PDF version available here

Social anthropologist Benny Peiser analysed Diamond's portrayal of Easter Island (PDF available here).

Australian biologist Jennifer Marohasy analysed Diamond's portrayal of modern Australia and found that his facts were generally lacking.

Jane Shaw writes about why Diamond has made such pessimistic claims about the future.

My own article analyzes Diamond's chapter about modern Montana. There were several blatant errors in this chapter - such as a claim that Montana has 20,000 abandoned mineral mines, which Diamond believes are contaminating Montana's water supply. By all accounts, this figure is a huge exaggeration. My article is available at the SSRN.