Guns, Germs, and Steel

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Refutation of Racial Superiority
Review: Diamond provides an eminently readable, interesting and convincing explanation of why civilizations developed where they did. A very worthwhile read for anyone interested in the origins of societies.

Rating:
Summary: Critique of last two critiques at 2 and 3 stars respectively
Review: I am currently reading Guns, Germs, and Steel and having considered not buying it due to two reviews prior to mine, I bought it because in reading more reviews below them, I found that it seemed some bias on the part of the two reviews was at work. While refuting another review is really not my object, I can say this, if you read the book, you will find that to every point these two reviews make, the ideas the reviewers made were taken out of context; the personal experiences Diamond mentions are put in a framework much larger than is mentioned, and germs, guns, and steel are brought up as signposts, as take off points from which interesting discussions are brought up in analyzing the strengths in cultures which may or may not come to dominate others.

I believe Diamond makes his points successfully, and further that this book is on par or higher with Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians. Then again, the only way to be convinced is to open a book to any page and consider the merit of what that page says.

--Matthew Hahn
http://www.movingtracks.com


Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, and yet so tedious
Review: I am recommending this book; however, I found it quite the chore to get through.

The premise of the book is a 400-page walk through human history to try to determine factors that led to some cultures dominating others, rather than the reverse, for example, the Europeans decimating the Native Americans rather than Native Americans traveling to Europe and dominating those people. The proximate causes are easy to see, but the ultimate causes are the subject of this book.

The author looks at many factors in all parts of the world: food production (why it was developed in some places and not in others), aggregation of populations, centralization of governments, development of technology, and so forth. His basic thesis is that development in the cultures of the world was subject to the various climatic, geographical, and ecological properties of the places they lived. He expands on this thesis and provides many compelling examples.

And then he beats all his points to death, using many examples over and over and over and over again. He repeats statements he made earlier, not as a review, but as though he were writing them for the first time. He condescends to us readers (for example, feeling like he has to tell us that honeybees give honey and silkworms silk). And he has made some sloppy errors (having carbon-14 decay to nitrogen-14 and carbon-12 in the same paragraph; mixing up aardwolves and aardvarks). His writing style is often clunky and stilted.

Nonetheless, I fought my way through the book to the end. And despite the obstacles thrown in my path to Page 420-something, I found the experience very interesting. Because the events he talks about happened in the distant past, it's hard to know whether he's right or not, but he does make a compelling argument for these physical factors making the difference in the development of different cultures.

So if you decide to read this book, skim when you get bored, but try to read it to the end.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling argument, but dull reading
Review: I have to agree with the reviewer who judged the book "fascinating, and yet so tedious". I found the main argument of Mr Diamond rather convincing. The reasons why humanity strived in certain geographical areas and not in others are also to be found in the way our planet, and life on it, are organized. The possibilities for agriculture and animal husbandry and the different epidemiological situations that different locations offered to our ancestors surely had a powerful impact in determining which societies could evolve better, and sooner. For this the author deserves 5 stars. This vision is completely consistent with my materialistic ideas about how we ended up being what we are, and where we are. However, I am surprising to find that so many reviewers (professionals and amateurs alike) find Mr Diamond a brilliant writer. Of course I do think he writes well, but I also think he is in a different league with respect to someone like, say, the late Stephen J Gould (at least the "first" Gould, before he started loving himself and his ideas so much to become unnecessarily pompous and self-referential). Mr Diamond writes clearly and convincingly, but he does it in a very dull and very very very etc. repetitive way. This is one of those really insighful books for which intellectual joy only comes from reading the introduction. After that, the rest of the book is just repetition of the main argument, and filling the blanks. This is not to say that details are unimportant. Quite the contrary. But they are often not that exiciting. I have only read a few chapters of this book, and then I gave up, rather bored by the lack of additional knowledge provided by later chapters. I had an even worse experience with one of his previous books (The third Chimapanzee). Mr Diamond is very creative and I really like his ideas, but I just don't like his books....

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Explanations
Review: I listened to the audio version of this book and was fascinated by the content. The author's premise is that there are specific geographic, animal and plant reasons why some countries and contents were able to flourish. Simple things such as whether or not certain continents had animals that could be domesticated. His theories made sense and accounted for why Europe and Asia where able to become so advanced and other continents were not as successful. I have recommended this to a number of friends and they almost all rave about this book and its content.

Rating:
Summary: I prefer Diamond's new book, Collapse.
Review: I prefer Diamond's sweeping new book, Collapse. It's much less "academic" yet it conveys many of the same ideas. In Collapse, Diamond sketches out the path of cataclysm. Environmental harm, climate alteration, fast population growth, and imprudent political choices were all factors in the ruin of some societies, but other societies found solutions and are surviving. Similar troubles face us today and have already brought calamity to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to muddle through in ground-breaking ways. Despite our own society's apparently limitless possessions and unequaled political power, portentous warning signs have begun to come into sight even in ecologically strong areas like Montana. This is an important book that raises many important questions. Every concerned person should read it.

Rating:
Summary: Intellectual blockbuster
Review: Jared Diamond is the most fascinating public intellectual out there, even though he comes from disciplines that I as an arrogant physicist never regarded as remotely interesting, such as botany or geography. I'd much rather attend a lecture by Diamond than, say Steven Hawking or Edward Witten.

What he does in this landmark book is weave together knowledge from a diverse set of seemingly unrelated disciplines, and form a lucid and scientifically compelling thesis as to why civilizations arising on the Eurasian landmass got a crucial early developmental leg up on those in Africa, the Americas or Australia.

To think that the fate of civilizations would depend on things as mundane as the types of native grains available and diseases incubated in domestic animals was to me quite revelatory and to others, apparently quite disturbing, as evidenced by the number of nitpicking and irrational negative reviews this book has attracted. I guess for some people it's more important to feel they are special than to learn something about how the world works.

Diamond's analysis does become somewhat less compelling when he attempts to explain comparative differences in more advanced societies (i.e. China vs. Europe), though it's still worth reading.

In other words, I liked this book.

Rating:
Summary: Let the Buyer Beware
Review: Mr. Diamond is clearly someone who is of Western European descent but finds nothing, or very little, to admire in his own heritage. To hear him tell it -- endlessly, I might add -- Western Civilization owes it ascent and dominance purely through nature's circumstance. He discounts religion and culture as drivers in the development of nations. A ridiculous notion, indeed!

For example, the Black Plague nearly wiped out Western Europe, but the Europeans rose from this period to begin the Renaissance era: a period of unequalled creativity and increased liberties for the average citizen, leading to the end of serfdom. If Mr. Diamond were predicting the course of the 2-3 centuries following such a cataclysmic event, I have no doubt he would predict the area to fall into great decline.

People determine their fate, and the fate of their nation, through their individual actions.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Mr. Diamond seems to have written this book as a means of refuting the old theories about non-Europeans being backward, and in a classic case of political correctness, he actually argues that the inhabitants of New Guinea are more intelligent than their European counterparts. (Yes, New Guinea--the same country in which cannibalism is believed to still go on in some areas.) Here's the gist of the author's argument: Europe's dominance of the world was almost solely an accident of geography; Europe had more natural resources (both plant and animal) than any other continent, and even people stupider than New Guineans couldn't have screwed it up.

While there is no doubt that Europe has been blessed with a favorable climate, good soils and plentiful wildlife, the same can be said for many other regions (such as North America, Australia and even West Africa), and Diamond's attempt to explain the difference between them left me unconvinced. Diamond's theory also completely fails to explain the success of Japan--a country that possesses few natural resources. In short, this is a classic case of a guy using selective data to prove a questionable point. Probably not worth your money.

Rating:
Summary: Planet Existential
Review: This book depressed me for weeks. The probable slaughter of all the large docile mammals by Clovis Man in the Americas about 11,000 years ago, then the slaughter of maybe 95% of the decedents of Clovis Man by European germs in the 16th Century, and all of it just so much bad luck! Millions and millions dead, denied, and unknown. The rape of the earth seems to be what the human animal has been about in the aggregate from the start. Look around, the rape is unabated. Good-bye, Sea of Cortez. Good-bye, East Coast fisheries. Good-by, wolf and grizzly. Been nice to know you, but really we just couldn't help ourselves. History, prehistory, read it and weep. Makes me long for the good old days, say 1924 in the highlands of New Guinea, mamma's suckling a piglet, later on we will kill it, and eat it!

Why do I recommend this book? Because the ideas Mr. Diamond so painstakingly presents go from a fundamental and mostly unconscious question, "Why does European culture dominate the world," to a breathtaking overview of the history of humans on the planet. This book has changed the way I think about history.