Everyone was glad that they had read (or had read part of) the book. But....

There was a suspicion that Diamond had started out with his conclusion, and then cherry-picked his facts to support it. Carolyn and Jenna certainly felt that his depictions of Montana and Chaco Canyon, respectively, were off the mark. And although he stated that he wrote the book from the middle of the road, to try to sway people to avert the impending doom, one would suspect that only leftist pinko people would actually manage to finish the book, and so the last chapters were merely preaching to the choir again.