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Summary: Very verbose.
Review: The author does not have a gift for writing. He uses so many sentences to state a fact communicated in one. He's into his vocabulary. I lost the themes of the book in his redundant phrasing. I don't know what competition he had in the Non-Fiction category for the Pulitzer Prize, but my guess is the CATEGORY won the prize, not the author and his book. Read chapter 18, forget the rest.
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Summary: What is a good "Great Men" read?
Review: To the historian from Wausau, WI. What is a good "Great Men" book(s) to read on this subject? There seem to be too many biographies out there, and so many 'Good' men.
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Summary: A "Mein Kampf" of the PC movement
Review: I made myself read the book because I paid for it. Rife with generalizations, most of which can only be described as stating the obvious. The bias from which the book derives--that potential answers to questions of why the world is the way that it is today may only be drawn from an approved list of solutions--is palpable nearly from page one. True scientific reasoning does not discard alien/differing explanations out of hand, but Mr. Diamond has no problem limiting himself, and it shows. Truly a mass of myopic overgeneralization every bit as worthless as Mein Kampf and just as dangerous. Dont bother.
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Summary: great book!!! changes your perspective!
Review: what i wants to say about that book are such well things. everybuddy should reads this and knows lot at the end.
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Summary: An extraordinary synthesis of numerous disciplines
Review: The sheer scope of the subject, the pathology of contemporary cultural relationships/dominance on a global scale, has proven unwieldy to most authors. Diamond has synthesized a wide variety of scientific disciplines in an effort to capture the 'why' of contemporary global cultural status quo. He nearly pulls it off while limiting his discussion to one volume, which could have used a 40 page liposuction. His explanation for cultural success in a macro-historical context is, in a nut shell, the same as successful real estate investing : location, location, location. It is in explaining the 'why' of geographical criticality that he raises the bar. Criticizing his work is precocious on my part, as I lack anthropology or archeology in my education. While Diamond doesn't answer all of the "why," he answers enough of it to define a sound point of departure for studies that synthesize his theory and the more difficult interractions of religion and politics (beliefs and behaviors.) I wonder if anybody can answer the "why" questions better, and support their conclusions. Diamond's reliance on New Guinea for many of his examples becomes tiresome. Otherwise, his explanations of geographical influence, and the second and third order effects on plant, animal, hydrographic, mineral, and human interaction, are logical, even if not proved to the deepest level of scientific rigor. He did after all limit his scope to one volume. The author avoids reliance on racial/genetic factors, preferring to rely on environmental stimuli as his fundamental causative factors. Even so, one gets the feeling that he is pandering to the PC audience when he continually portrays the "Eurasian" descendants as avaricious butchers. Whether you agree with the author or not, it is well worth anyone's time to read his arguements and ponder them, and even show where his logic does not stand up. Also worthwhile would be an exploration of how the information age may have rendered some of his causative factors of cultural diffusion obsolete. In any case READ THIS BOOK! It will stimulate your brain.
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Summary: Guns, Germs, and Steel clobbers race based conflict theories
Review: Racial Conflict is one of America's most serious social problems. Guns, Germs, and Steel destroys the foundation of racially based conflict theories.Lectures based upon this book should be a part of the required curriculum in all high schools, and certainly no one should be allowed to graduate from our colleges and universities without reading it.
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Summary: It makes you think - like any good book should ...
Review: Yes, I agree with some of the other questions in other reviews. One of the first things that came to my mind was whether someone like Stephen Hawking would have survived in PNG. But, I don't think that is the author's point. He raises a number of interesting points that span a large time span - of course there will be issues that can be discounted. The strength of the book is the generalities the author is able to draw about the development of man.
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Summary: Terrific overview of the why's & wherefores of civilization
Review: Unlike some of the reviewers below, I didn't find this book to be an attack on European civilization and culture, but rather an explanation for why those cultures flourished and others elsewhere in the world didn't (and, let's get real here, Western Civilization (uppercase) is the big kid on the block and could use an occasional tweak)). His demonstration that advanced civilizations seem to arise and flourish under only very narrow 'windows of opportunity' was excellent and, as good science should be, testable. As he shows, there's only a few places in the world that had grains and animals with the potential to be domesticated. Further, that cultures that hadn't domesticated animals became lethally susceptible to animal/human diseases for which they'd developed no resistance. He may have gone a little overboard in hammering home the point that less "advanced" human populations are not that way because they're somehow inherently less intelligent--but then, there WAS an awful lot of attention paid to "The Bell Curve" (demolished as a scientific argument by Gould's second edition of "The Mismeasure of Man"). Anyway, a terrific book and worthy of the Pulitzer it was awarded.
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Summary: Interesting, but overly deterministic and redundant.
Review: Easy way to read "Guns, Germs, and Steel": Flip to chapter 18, 'Hemispheres Colliding'. Read 20 pages instead of 500, and you have the gist of the book. Not only this, but Diamond repeats his thesis ad nauseam--that the only reason Western culture is the dominant one in the world today is an accident of geography. While his theories *do* have some merit, in my opinion, he discounts completely (no, I forget...he mentions it in the EPILOGUE)the human contribution to history. I realize that 'Great Man' historians are on the wane in the face of the spread of humanistic psychology and the PC craze--but are we then to conclude that we are all nothing more than a product of geography, without the chance to change history ourselves? As an historian, I say no. But then, I'm rather biased. As is Diamond, an evolutionary biologist--this bias shows. Take it for what it's worth, and remember my tip...
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Summary: Very Good, Though Not as a Stand-Alone
Review: Diamond's book is a very useful perspective on the great scope of human history, written from the biologist's point of view. As use, it is a very good companion to other books, for example, Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, which address many of the same questions from the economist's point of view. Together, they do a far better job of explaining the rise of the West than traditional history texts.
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