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Summary: Multifaceted view of human evolution...
Review: Diamond does an excellent job of identifying and analyzing some the forces that have shaped human development over the centuries. I found a number of new ideas in this book, for example: the notion that humans have modified plans through selective breeding to emphasize the characteristics we value most (e.g. almonds used to be poisonious, not anymore!) With regard to contemporary history (say, the last 500 years) it would be nice if Diamond spent some time discussing the cultural factors and how they interplay with the other two factors (biology and physical resources). Definitely recommended if you'd like to hear some interesting ideas about how we got where we are today.
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Summary: Not all that it's cracked up to be
Review: I read this book after hearing great things about it. It is supposed to explain why some areas are wealthy, and others poor. This it does not even try to do. What it does try to do (and rather well, even if at great length) is explain why advanced civilization arose in Eurasia rather than the Americas or Sub-Saharan Africa. Bravo. But the author spends only a few pages at the end of the book trying to explain why development came to some parts of Eurasia and not others (why Europe developed into a Roman Empire and India didn't), and no time at all speculating on why some parts of the world are wealthy today (even geographically disadvantaged areas like Japan), and others are not. I was disappointed at the narrow scope of this book, as well as its redundancy.
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Summary: Biased politically-correct tripe
Review: Jared Diamond claims that Europeans advanced further than Native American, Asian, African, etc. because the Europeans developed plow-driven farming sooner and thereby developed organized societies sooner. Also Europeans developed immunities through frequent contact with various domestic animals and consequently defeated other peoples by bringing diseases with them. Entirely valid thesis, except that Diamond proceeds to pick any evidence supporting it, and ignores anything that contradicts it.Why did Britain conquer India? Indians were certainly more resistant to diseases in India, had BETTER domestic animals (elephants to pull canons, for instance), and had just as sophisticated social structure. And during the Indian Mutiny their weapons were just as good as the British ones. Yet the outnumbered British prevailed. The central point of Diamond's book is Pizarro's capture of Atahualpa (168 Spaniards against 80,000 Incas). Diamond attributes that stunning victory purely to superior weaponry - ignoring the fact that with 500 to 1 advantage completely unarmed people (and Incas WERE armed, if poorly) can easily swarm armored arquebusiers by sheer mass. Incas were paralyzed by their delusional view of reality - in other words, their CULTURE. And culture seems to be either a dirty world, or a non-existent one to Diamond. He does no even consider that cultural differences, such as tradition of rational inquiry, have anything to do with military victories. The book is rife with such omissions. The Mongols conquered China and half of Europe and they were a nomadic, non-agricultural people. Diamond gives them exactly one sentence ("Mongol empire stretched 6,000 miles"). African tribal societies had farming and domesticated animals for centuries before the Europeans arrived. China had all the advantages Europe had, yet according to Diamond lost out because (get that!) its smooth coastline allowed no refuge to dissenters from the government that suppressed innovation (and why would it do that?). European coastline is convoluted, so such dissenters could hide. No mention of European governments which encouraged innovation (culture again!) and prospered as a result. As for Diamond's claim early in the book that New Guineans are more intelligent that Westerners, that's just pure racism - especially in view of his repeated claims elsewhere in the book that no humans groups innately differ in intelligence. Except these two, apparently. He thinks that the violence of New Guinean society - that any encounter with a stranger could turn deadly, - bred out the stupid ones. Assuming that is true, one wonders why did New Guineans never grow smart enough to END such violence? Even worse is Diamond's mention of his experiences on a Midwestern farm where all white farmhands were hard-drinking scum, and the only decent person was a Native American. That's just gratuitous white-bashing, so common on liberal college campuses. Without that and the "New Guineans must be smarter" bit, I would have given the book 2 stars ("intriguing idea, poorly executed"). As is, it deserves the lowest rating possible.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating & important addition to anyones understanding.
Review: This is very important book about the powerful role that geography plays, and has played, in determining the relative success or failure of the societies it originates and gives shelter to. I've had some fun in reading through the various and extremely varied reviews on the merit of J. Diamonds thesis. Many "educated" minds have weighed in on the validity of "this or that" aspect of his basis. Now, I'm not exactly at the forefront of modern biological, political, or social science, but I know enough to firmly believe that "geographic determinism" is a major influence on societal development. When I look at it through the lens of Chaos Theory (where big outcomes are sensitively influenced products of tiny variables) it seems clear to me that where societies originated on this map could very well be the biggest factor in determining their success. This is a fascinating read. Very well researched, peppered with interesting historical stories and insight. I'm sure there are holes in Jareds position, as is the case with even well developed science, but this is an important addition to anyones understanding about history, societies, and their frequent inequity.
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Summary: A Simplier Explanation Is IQ
Review: This author attempts to explain the economic success of societies as being due to certain natural advantages. However, "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" analyses the relation between national IQ scores and measures of economic performance. In one analysis of 81 countries for which direct evidence on national IQs is available, mean national IQ correlates 0.71 with per capita Gross National Product (GNP) for 1998, and 0.76 with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 1998. Other analyses consistently demonstrate national IQs predict both long term (1820-1922) and short term (1950-90; 1976-1998) economic growth rates measured variously by per capita GNP and GDP (mean rs ~ 0.60). Regression analyses of the 81 countries, and then of 185 countries, including 104 whose national IQs are estimated by averaging those from adjoining countries, shows the national differences in wealth are explained first, by the intelligence levels of the populations; second, by whether the countries have market or socialist economies; and finally, by unique circumstances such as, in the case of Qatar, by the possession of valuable natural resources like oil. "IQ And The Wealth of Nations" has a lucid, expository style. Chapter 1 reviews the various theories advanced over the last 250 years to explain why some countries are rich while others are poor. These include climate theories (temperate zones are said to be best), geographic theories (an East-West Axis is said to be best), modernization theories (urbanization and division of labor are said to be good), dependency theories (exploitation and peripheralization of poor nations are said to be bad), neoliberal theories (market economies are said to be good), and psychological theories (cultural values like thriftiness, the Protestant Ethic, and motivation for achievement are said to be good). While some of these theories almost certainly account for some of the disparities between countries, IQ scores turn out to be the single best predictor.
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Summary: Geography is all?
Review: Diamond's clearly stated thesis is that geography is the great determiner of human destiny, though, weirdly, it is left out of the title of the book. The book actually has little to say about the three items of the title, but rather focuses on the natural resources available to different regions of the world, the animals that could be domesticated, and the possibilities for communicating with other adjacent cultures. In line with the current passion for multiculturalism, he argues that the people involved are pretty much all equivalent, and that there are no important racial differences that need to be considered. He dismisses the work of the psychometricians whose data, in spite of the taboos of our current state, reveal in hundreds of studies that people's intelligence vary by racial group. He throws out this data, incredibly, based on his own assessments of personal experience with different peoples. In fact, he baldly states his belief that stone age peoples such as New Guineans (whom he knows something about) are actually on average more intelligent than white Europeans. One more example of introspective speculation and personal, anecdotal experience being being mistaken for hard data that can be replicated, graphed, statistically analyzed, and added to by studies with improved methodologies. His attack on such an important question as IQ and the "wealth of nations" is weak, unconvincing, unscholarly, colored by political correctness, and short. In order to see the importance of geography and race, Diamond might have considered comparing the development over the last few hundred years of the peoples on the islands of Hispaniola and Iceland. Try spending a couple of hours with your browser aimed at the CIA fact book, Google's pictures, and a few other readily available sources, then tell me why you think geography is the prime mover in the fate of nations! His hopes of helping to see history become more scientific, argued in his last chapter, though, certainly is meritorious. Really important questions about the history and destiny of man can and should be attacked by scientific methods, and perhaps Diamond's accretion of observations and speculations do serve as a sort of start, something like how alchemy started chemistry.
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Summary: deserves careful reading and discussion
Review: This is a book which provides a well thought out and well argued case for his thesis of the development of historical development. It is not simply broad brush strokes, though his thesis is relatively easy to summarize: 1. basic east west layout of Eurasia (diversty of animals and plants thus allowed to spread), 2. rise of complex concentrated societies (thus development of competing ideas and greater immunity to diseases). Yet it is not too bound to specific historical or cultural detail, though each concept is first analized in specific examples (sort of test cases) before being applied more generally. I think this forces the reader to be more critical and puts any discussion on a more serious footing, since we are forced to discuss not just opinions, but facts and very often deductions based on those facts. This book cannot be easily dismissed and I hope will provide for deeper discusson into our past and our future. One little note. I was surprised when he wrote of kleptocrats gaining support through ideology or religion that he did not mention the etymology of the word "religion", which literally comes from "rex" and "ligio": bound to one's king. Providing further confirmation of his analysis of its role.
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Summary: How to disguise a Eurocentric Argument (?)
Review: Diamond's book on world history is fortunate--it survives its main thesis, which is incoherent and makes no sense as theory. Still, you can hop on for the ride in a wealth of interesting detail, beginning with its charming opening answering the query of the author's Borneo friend: the puzzle of modernity. In fact the book provides no answer, and we should distinguish modernity, which is global, from the 'rise of the West', which is tribal. The field of theories trying to explain the rise of the modern world is littered with failures, witness the rites administered by Jim Blaut to eight such, in Eight Eurocentric Historians.
The plain and obvious problem with Diamond's approach is that while it makes beginning students of geography and history feel better, it suddenly suffers a burst bubble effect as it becomes obvious geographical determinism fails completely to explain what is happening. And the result ends up being a concealed 'take it or leave it' form of Eurocentrism. Perhaps the good will and overall tenor of the book make the vacuum of explanation seem of secondary importance. Certainly the mainline of the account is filled with fascinating bits. But I think this kind of explanatory apparatus is a casualty of Darwinian assumptions and the failure of an age of science to produce the kind of philosophy of history that could address the issue properly.
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Summary: Flawed Argument
Review: There is a fallacy at the heart of Diamond's book that has not been noticed. What Diamond does is give the reader a story as to why this or that group of people did not develop a civilisation: that story always depending on there being some feature in their local environment that was lacking. The message is that Western civilisation was a matter of luck, of being in the right place at the right time. Had New Guinea tribesman been where the Romans were then they would have founded the Roman Empire instead. The trouble with this is that the existence of a story does not mean that it is the correct story or explanation. The fact that an environment (say that of the New Guinea tribesman) is non-conducive in some way does not mean that that is why civilisation did not develop there: civilization may not have developed there *even if it had been conducive*. That is, the non-existence of civilisation there could have been overdetermined by more than one factor. Yet Diamond's book is built on and around this logical fallacy with no apparent awareness of it. So why may civilisation not have developed in the places that it didn't? For an alternative explanation see the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, by Lynn and Vanhanen. The brisk message of that book is that civilisations are built on intelligence, and where intelligence is not then, perforce, civilizations do not grow. People may be reluctant to swallow that bitter truth-but that will not make it go away. But without a refutation of this alternative explanation, Jared Diamond's book looks like a series of Just So stories-of the kind: why the lion doesn't laugh.
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Summary: WORLD HISTORY AT ITS BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond hypothesizes that geographical positioning determined why certain Eurasian-influenced societies acquired an array of conquering forces, which included military technology, lethal diseases, and a complex societal organization, at an earlier historical period than other non-Eurasian influenced societies. For Diamond, the conquest of the Americas, Africa, and the South Pacific territories, should be traced to historical developments taking place from 11,000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. (p.16). These conquests, which were monopolized by European states, received their impetus from the diffusion of crops, livestock, technology, and writing systems, developed within the pre-modern Fertile Crescent (p.411).
Possessing the advantages of 1) a high diversity of plant and animal species, 2) a large climactic variation, 3) a wide range of latitudes, 4) a wealth in big mammals, and 5) a disposition towards an agricultural-sedentary lifestyle, the Fertile Crescent promoted food surpluses and high population densities, which gave rise to crowd diseases, a governmental bureaucracy dependent on an emerging writing system, and a technological advancement predicated on a culmination of previous invention and geographic reception to neighboring expertise and application (p.138-42, 205, 236, 245-46, 256). Diamond persuasively argues that the transmission and reception of technologically-advancing techniques of certain farming and writing systems could not overcome the tropical conditions of sub-Saharan Africa, the hot intervening lowlands of Central America, the inhospitable Saharan desert, and the arid Chihuahuan highlands (p.186-87,238).
In my opinion, Jared Diamond does a fantastic job of constituting a groundbreaking and nuanced interpretation of world history. Taking the Braudelian view of history a step further, Diamond brings a scientific methodology to the study of the inter-relation between geography and history. Although Diamond does dismiss the role of individuality in world history, he does not ignore its position. Rather to understand the function of men like Edison and Hitler in shaping certain historical eras, you must first place these individuals within the broad pattern of a historical synthesis (p.420). Finally, Diamond's greatest contribution to a world-historical perspective could be the nail he drives into the coffin of European preeminence and innate superiority. Through lucid reasoning, Diamond explains that the European conquest of the New World, which in his cited example is the Incan Empire of the sixteenth century, should not be interpreted as a result of unique European biology and ideology, but a culmination of an autocatalytic process resulting from technology, agricultural crops, and a writing system transmitted from Eurasia. Through these historical acquisitions, the Spanish conquistadores easily conquered Atahuallapa's regime thanks to a devastating European-imported small pox epidemic that preceded Pizarro's fateful landing, a lack of information concerning the gold-seeking intentions of the united Spanish Crown, and the horse-warfare techniques honed through centuries of Asiatic steppe warfare and now an indispensable asset to these disheveled Iberians (p.76-79). The treachery of Pizarro does not make a difference to Diamond, since even the nineteenth century Maori exhibited the same tendency (p.53). Rather, what matters is the geographical-loaded dice which dealt Pizarro a winning roll.
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