Overcoming Crisis: Advice From The World's Smartest Man

You can find a lot of advice on how to make your way through a personal crisis, like the loss of a job or a divorce. What if that crisis relates to an entire country instead? That's the fascinating topic of the upcoming book Upheaval from Pulitzer prize-winning writer and scientist Jared Diamond. I've read many of his books over the past two decades and this latest one is his most timely.

There are many parts of the world today that could aptly be described as being in crisis, whether political, environmental or economic. Like all of his books, the scope of stories Diamond examines are truly global, from “Germany’s postwar rebuilding to Australia’s search for a postcolonial identity.” What makes his books must-reads for me is his ability to look deeply at one part of the world and translate it into a broader implication about the world at large.

I have described Diamond in the past as perhaps the smartest man alive today because of his earned ability to offer big macro lessons that elevate his reader's thinking beyond the day to day concerns of their own lives. And anyone who can get large groups of people to see the bigger picture beyond themselves is certainly worth listening to.