[1] Part one on resilience relating to ecology discusses environmental issues faced by past civilizations and how they have adapted to those challenges, with specific examples examining Rapa Nui, the Norse settlements in Greenland, and China's changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Part two is about the resilience of indigenous communities in Asia and the Americas, particularly those of Mesopotamia, the lowland Maya area, and the rapid social and ecological changes faced by tribes in the American Southwest.

Flexner notes that the essays are able to get across the idea that "transformation is likely the one inevitable factor in history" and instead of "tragic catastrophe and destruction", it is the perspective that "these processes, while sometimes accompanied by violent upheaval, usually reflect more of the resilience and adaptability of dynamic human cultures" that matters.

[3] Patrick Vinton Kirch in the Journal of Anthropological Research positively stated that the "collection of provocative essays" contained in Questioning Collapse furthers the conversation among scholars about what is the proper way to frame historical events and "whether they even should try to read lessons from the past in order to address contemporary problems".

[5] The Journal of World History's Emily Wakild pointed out that while the different authors involved makes separate essays somewhat uneven when reading them together, the thematic organization of the sections helps to smooth over the general tone issues and they manage to "incisively show the weaknesses of Diamond’s narrative(s)".

Tainter concluded that it is a "difficult task" that the fifteen authors have taken to counter popular science misinformation, a " noble attempt to make an unfortunate situation better", and deserve "our respect and admiration" for it.

Wilkinson hoped for an additional volume in the future that can tie together all of these other scientific perspectives into a single work for the public, but also more comprehensively integrate discussions of climate change into the historical narrative.

[12] The authors released an open letter on March 22, 2010 through Cambridge University Press calling out Diamond for his conflict of interest and for the multiple errors and misinformation in his Nature review regarding the content of the book.