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Summary: Why did whitey come out on top?
Review: That was the question, posed by a tribal leader in New Guinea, which piqued the curiosity of one Jared Diamond and fomented the production of this fascinating and accessible account of the development of human civilization.Mr. Diamond begins with the first humans, and describes the movement and evolution of these humans. He demonstrates the primacy of environment to the progress of people groups and crafts a convincing case for the what might be called the "right place at the right time" school of cultural supremacy. Advantages such as a wide variety of domesticable plants and animals and the ease of transmission of technologies explain the rapid rise of some to meteor heights without reference to any innate superiority. The advantages bestowed by their respective geography culminated in the development of Guns, Germs and Steel by the would-be-colonizers. In short, this book weaves the bare facts of World geography into a wholesale account of the development of human societies. Mr. Diamond is fully cognizant of the political ramifications of accounting for the different development rates of people groups, thus he is careful to eschew any idea that would smack of racial superiority and reaffirm the completely contingent and external sources of such differences. Diamond, in fact, essentially assumes that racial or ethnic differences are irrelevant. He makes numerous attempts to discredit theories based upon racial difference and restricts his positive explanatory assertions to those based upon geography. The Book is a fascinating speculative account of the development of human society. It seemed to me that he was a bit too curt in dispensing other, less politically palatable, explanations for this phenomena. In so doing, he abstains from bringing the death knell down on the claim of an innate basis for racial disparities. His ultimate conclusions were hamstrung by his self-imposed political constraints that serve to hamper the compelling case that he makes in opposition. Nonetheless, the book is so ambitious and fascinating, that I was more than willing to overlook this shortcoming.
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Summary: a breathtaking overview
Review: A few years ago, I read an account in the New Yorker of an Eskimo man who entered Harvard and became a stellar student. I was surprised at this, and then, surprised at myself for my reaction. I had prided myself in possessing an egalitarian belief in the capabilities and talents of all people, and was caught up short when I realized that I had questioned the adaptability of a man from what we would call a "primitive" society. In his Pulitzer-prize winning study, Jared Diamond broadens our thinking, providing an antidote for the idea that people from one culture are innately superior to people from any others. He discusses factors like climate, animals suited for domestication, edible native plants, geographic barriers of desert and mountains, and epidemic disease. This book, despite being reader-friendly, is one that will take some concentrated time to digest. Diamond encompasses a variety of scientific disciplines---biology and anthropology, of course, but also physics and climatology, among others. He also incorporates the "humanities" fields of history and philosophy. In the final chapter, in what I see as evidence of both modesty and probing curiosity, he raises a number of questions for further consideration and study.
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Summary: One of the most incredible books you'll ever read.
Review: Concerning global power imbalances, the best book on this subject I have ever read, by a million country miles, is "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It's one of the most amazing books I've ever read, truly original, thoroughly researched and completely logical. Basically, it says that while there is genetic variation amongst the human population (which is obvious), and while this means that certain sub-groups are better or worse in certain characteristics than others - this is all insignificant. What is significant is that no matter which group of people you picked - whether a current specific sub-group or frankly any set of healthy humans at random - they will exploit their immediate environment to the maximum capability. So the power imbalances, and he gives numerous thorough and globally complete examples of these, are entirely due to different starting environments. Essentially, if you went back 2000 years and swapped the American Indian population with the British population of the time, the present would still look exactly the same, because the British colonisation of the America's wasn't based on any inherent white superiority over red, but was based in the fact that European domesticated crops and animals were more useful and advantageous than American domesticated crops and animals.
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Summary: The way it really is.
Review: I simply am a terrific fan of any book that makes sense. This one does. It is well written covering a very complex subject that can be overwhelming. It was not. If you want to know why the universe is the way it is this book is superb. Only E. O. Wilson is a comperable master of being able to accomplish this.
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Summary: A must-read book/Estupendo libro sobre la historia humana
Review: We shouldn't expect to have "the history of everybody" in a 400-pages book, but the information showed in this one will make you feel it was so. Moreover, the author's style is nice and you will not get lost in the data from several fields of natural and human sciences: you'll enjoy them. To Spanish readers: Este es un magnífico libro sobre la historia de la humanidad. Es demasiado ambicioso cubrir en 400 páginas la historia completa del ser humano, pero la información presentada da la sensación de que así ha sido. El estilo del autor es excelente; relaciona muy bien los datos que presenta aun siendo de áreas diferentes: antropología, física, botánica, idiomas, etc. Esto le da al libro una continuidad que lo hace más interesante. Leí la versión en inglés y estoy buscándolo en español.
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Summary: A Simple Twist of Fate
Review: This is a fascinating and comprehensive attempt to understand the present makeup of the world population. Why do some societies thrive while others die on the vine? His basic arguments are compelling though the scope is a bit overwhelming. If you grew up next to crops that could be domesticated and with large animals to help plow the fields and that you could eat, you have a helluva chance of surviving and growing. If the population grows, more innovations happen. Armies can be supported and expansion can proceed. If you also happen to live on a land mass with an east-west axis, rather than north-south, you have the latitude thing going for you and better diffusion for your crops. In other words, it really isn't a race thing. Fascinating in its' scope, though a bit pedantic and repetitive on the same issues.It's really a question of survival of those born in the hood. Most interesting parts. Pizarro and the Incas, the problem with domesticating zebras, Madagascar being Asian(10,000 years ago, going 4000 miles across the Indian Ocean without a compass or map?!);Bantus not making it to southern Africa and not blocking European expansion in south Africa, thus changing history, the origin of disease-stay away from those pigs, China's walking away from their lead in development, and the overall detective work, tying in biology, archeology and linguistics. Have you eaten your wheaties?
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Summary: No
Review: This book plays into the politically correct attitude that no one is the master of his fate, that losers are always merely victims. I highly highly recommend as a book to balance this one, Lawrence Harrison's book WHO PROSPERS?
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Summary: History is written by the victor.
Review: Diamond writes from the perspective of the victor. This compromises the integrity and content. Obvious clues stare him in the face, but he refuses to see them. He admits hunter-gatherer worked less hard to survive than the farming counterparts. He admits humans are included in the category "animal". But the explanation as to the slow acceptance of farming and civilization are still attributed to a flaw, or problem within the people themselves. The idea these people chose to remain hunter-gatherer over farmer is outside his realm of possibility. This is why he claims there are still many questions unanswered. Inaccurate and ethnocentric.
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Summary: Civilization Revisited
Review: For an amateur evolutionary anthropologist I found the book a fascinating, multi-faceted, and generally readable story of the evolution of civilization since the last ice age. Diamond takes us from nomadic hunter-gatherers who were fortunately situated by climate and geography to find domesticated plants and animals to the birth of fixed farming communities. The latter needed organization, bureaucracy, political systems, and language, as well as an army to defend their territory and expand into neighboring ones. He demonstrates which of the wild plants were most readily domesticated (wheat, barley, millet, sorghum) and which animals contributed to the protein diet and transportation (sheep, goats, cows, pigs, horses,dogs). He also makes logical arguments as to why other animals were not domesticable. Interestingly, most of the domesticated animals are herbivores. Because of the roughly 10% efficiency of conversion of food (either meat or vegetation) to weight, the carnivores must consume 10 times their weight in their prey of herbivores, which must therefore consume 10 times their weight in vegetation; it is thus much more efficient for man to eliminate carnivores - the middle man - as their primary diet. Of course, most of the carnivores are also more dangerous and not easily captured. But this is a sidebar to the story. With this as a point of departure, Diamond traces the evolution and trajectories of societies around the world - starting with the Fertile Crescent in the middle east about 12000 B.C. - in a suitable climate (much later decayed to deserts by deforestation and overgrazing). And progressing first to Austronasian, (China) to Polynesia, New Guinea, and Australia and somewhat later to Greece and western Europe. The diffusion of farming, animals, language, and technology (including the wheel), moved readily in both directions across the Euro-Asian continents - which extends east-west without many ecological or geographical barriers. This compares to the slow diffusion of corresponding features in the western hemisphere where plants and animals (llama and alpaca in South America) never made it across the vast climatic and geographical barriers into North America. It is surprising that corn domesticated in Mexico took a few millenia to make it to native Americans in eastern U.S. And the wheel - used on Mexican toys - took several millennia to develop in the western hemisphere much after they had become operating transportation systems in the middle east. With the development of ocean going ships (which had been abandoned by the Chinese for political reasons) we approach recorded history - with the Norse arrivals in Greenland (which did not last), and the Spanish conquests of the Incas in Peru (with a few hundred horse-mounted troops with weapons), and the Aztecs in Mexico. Having brought "civilization" to the new world, they then devastated the natives with weapons and disease. Diamond presents this "history" as hypotheses in need of further elaboration rather than as dogma. The story is made more fascinating by the anthropological tools (carbon dating), the garbage left by primitive tribes and communities, pottery, language, and technology, which make sense of the geographical dispersion of peoples and their cultural evolution. Diamond's book is repetitive and plodding in places, but the reader will be well rewarded by pursuing this fascinating story, which ends with a question as to what the future holds for civilization.
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Summary: Great book; will get you thinking
Review: Guns, Germs and Steel studies human history with a geographical and biological approach that is both refreshing and informative. It answers some very important questions and provides an introduction to the phenomena of plant and animal domestication that (after reading it) seems essential to understanding human history. I wish I'd read it in high school! On the down side, the book is at times repetitive and has too few maps.
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