It's tempting to see the title as a description of the work itself, as the author of such research-heavy masterpieces as Good to Great and Built to Last, here interrupts another project to let loose a few thoughts on the global recession.

Opportunistic? Maybe. But Collins is always honest and he admits early on that this book is the result of a piece of journalism with which he got carried away. How the Mighty Fall is essentially an extended answer to a simple question: how do you know if your organisation is in decline?
Collins describes it as being like a staged disease. Early on it's hard to spot but easy to cure, while later it becomes easier to spot but harder to cure. He identifies five stages of decline, starting with hubris in success and ending in irrelevance or death. Perhaps most worrying is that the first three usually occur during periods of growth and success.

This may not be as fully researched as some of his earlier work, but it is packed with the author's trademark questions that will make readers look again at their own organisations, however successful they appear to be.