Rating: 
Summary: Pulitzer?
Review: Fertile Land=Agriculture and Domesticated Animals=Stored Food=Craftsmen and Politicians=Weapons and Technology=Exploration and Conquest. How profound! Wasn't that part of Anthropology 101 when I took it 30 years ago? I should have known better than to slog thorough this tome once the author (scientist?) speculated that the people of New Guinea were more intelligent than Eurasians because they were naturally selected for intelligence while Eurasians were only naturally selected for immunity to disease. That was right after he ridiculed and condemned as a racist anyone who suggests there might be intellectual differences between racial groups. Incredible. Poorly written, repetitive and unoriginal. The Pulitzer committee (and Bill Gates) should be embarrassed. It's the last time a Pulitzer will influence my selection of a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious Going
Review: It was brutal getting through it, but I am glad I read it. There were numerous pieces of information on the evolution of civilation that were revelations to me. His discussion on how plant domestication evolved was particularly helpful. How diseases evolve was also good.
Rating:
Summary: No original contributions, poorly written
Review: Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" correctly suggests that environment is a major factor in the development of human societies. But his dismissal of all other factors involved and his inconsistent use of examples to suggest his arguements without any balanced discussion trouble this reader. The most valuable part of the book is "further readings." He cites the excellent work by the Cavalli-Sforzas on paleobotany and a number of works on the effects of disease on human society. Read the references; ignore this book.
Rating: 
Summary: One more arrow for Diamond's quiver
Review: Diamond's work was so creative and perceptive I was ready for him to take off on one of my favorite tangents, the role of fluoride deficiency in the evolution of modern society. He just barely touched on the idea that maybe the varied diets of hunters and gatherers was better quality-wise than the monotonous diets of the earliest cereal farmers. (See pages 105, 112, 138 and 149 in the hardback.) Hunters and gatherers had fluoride intakes vastly greater than we do today. Fluoride is in the rougher-tougher parts of foods. For the most relevant example, the grain that cows eat has about 100 times the fluoride of the bread that we eat. The same is true between cow's pasture grass and our vegetables like broccoli. In some cases the difference goes the other way. For example, our canned salmon with the bones has much higher fluoride than their salmon meat peeled off the bones. But all totaled a reasonable estimate is that hunters and gatherers got about 5 times the fluoride of modern people. A common misconception is that if we were hunters and gatherers we would die by about age 30 because our teeth would rot out. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Almost any book on anthropology will tell you that it was hard to find so much as a trace of tooth decay before agriculture was adopted. In fact, that is one clue used to say that people had started farming - their teeth started showing small areas with weak enamel called enamel defects, and traces of decay. Even with primitive agriculture, many groups still had almost zero decay. This was especially true if they lived near the sea (seafood is very rich in fluoride, roughly 10 times a fresh water equivalent). Although tooth decay is largely under control in modern America, it is often called the most common disease on earth. The spread of tooth decay is an excellent example of Diamond's "arrow of disease" concept. There is a 1945 book, a bit weird and very obscure, that tells the story of how people's teeth changed when their diets changed from primitive to modern. It is called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston A. Price, DDS. The interesting thing is that the changes happened not so much to the first people to eat modern food, but to their children who were conceived, born, and raised on it. The older generation, even the very oldest, had fine sets of teeth. The children had both rampant dental caries and crooked teeth - and a whole litany of other health problems. The pictures and examples in this book are staggering. By a quirk of fate there is also a story about a group of people whose diets went the other way. A group of modern settlers got stranded on an island, Tristan da Cunha, for a few decades when shipping routes changed. When they were found their children had near-perfect teeth. Increased fluoride in their diet was given the credit. (Sognnaes 1941, Journal of Dental Research 20:16.) When they once again returned to modern foods, the new kids born had rotten teeth. (Rosevear 1993, PPNF Nutrition Journal 17(1):12.) During the 1930's many mineral deficiencies were discovered. One of the big stories of the 1940's was that fluoride in water supplies was found to reduce dental decay by about 50%. This finding, by a public health dentist, H. Trendly Dean, reverberated throughout the dental community. Shortly thereafter followed the first official U.S. recommendation to use fluoride supplements for preventing tooth decay, by McClure in 1943, and the first artificial fluoridation of water, by public health dentists in 1945, and the formation of anti-fluoridationist groups by other dentists. About half the country ended up fluoridated. For the rest of us there were fluoride products prescribed by doctors. In 1961 the first popular fluoride-vitamin supplements were used in pregnancy and childhood. These products prevented virtually 100% of all cavities in teeth that formed while the fluoride was being taken. They also caused quite a few cases of "mild fluorosis" (white spots on teeth) when the early doses were way too high for infants. A low and steady supply of fluoride during pregnancy and childhood helped create the gorgeous teeth you see on so many young people today. Modern doctors such as FB Glenn and TC Peebles discovered some of these techniques and have written about them in great detail. I would have enjoyed his book more if Diamond had stumbled onto some of these fluoride stories, but overall it is still a great read.
Rating: 
Summary: I guess some folks don't have the patience
Review: I think some of the reviewers here didn't read the book closely enough to understand the context of some of Diamond's arguments. He never says that biogeographical effects are the ONLY causes history. His main purpose is the search for the ultimate, extremely general causes for the broadest of trends in human history and prehistory. By the time the Mongols roared across Asia, or the Moguls invaded India, many cultures around the world already changed so much that bioregional factors, though seminal in the creation of these broadest trends, weren't nearly as important as the political, religious and economic ones. He is not ignoring religion and so on but, he states plainly several times that isn't his focus. He is looking for ultimate causes--before humans had extremely advanced mental concepts like religion. He also wanted to point out the devastating influence of disease on history. It was surely the European germs that did most of the conquering of Native Americans. The guns and horses were almost incidental. Later on, once Europeans had established themselves, then we can focus on economic and political systems. But we can't ignore the effects of the diseases unleashed on the Americas. These plagues gave the Europeans a very lucky boost that catapulted them beyond the wealth and power of China, India or the Middle East--long before the Industrial Revolution made this gap obvious. Another thing that some people seem to be having trouble with is his assertions about the native intelligence of tribal peoples around the world. (If you read the book, you notice that he is not just saying this about the New Guineans.) He takes pains to point out what he means by this. He not talking about some mysterious genetic superiority of tribal peoples. It's all straight up culture. Tribal culture forces people to be better generalists than they'd have to be in literate civilizations. They can't rely on embedded support structures like books for memory or experts for obscure fields. They have to be pretty good at a lot things. Otherwise they die. They have to be better at memorizing things because they can't count on computers or books to remember things for them. Living in a dangerous, wild environment makes them cautious and aware of all that is going on around them. That was all he meant. The circumstance of tribal peoples force them, only in very broad ways and only on an individual basis, to be smarter and more curious than civilized people. And in the end it does them no good. Because civilized societies are SMARTER than tribal societies. That is why tribal society has been steadily disappearing over the millenia. They just can't compete. Finally, of course the book is repetitive. In fact he sums up his argument in the preface of the book. You needn't even read the rest if you don't want to. The rest of the book consists of him reiterating his points from different angles to point out the objections he has managed to answer and the many questions that still remain. He is just following scholarly practice and exposition--just to make things clear that he has thought about this. He knows that his theory can't explain everything. In the epilog he points out that China, India and the Middle East are good counter examples to his idea. They each had an expansionist rise to great power--a time when they were unafraid to try new ideas and explore new ways of doing things. If the highly complex forces of economics, politics, religion had arrayed themselves differently. We might all be speaking Arabic now. Or Cantonese. Europe was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time for things to come together as they did.
Rating:
Summary: Guns, Germs, and Steel is a political treatise, not science.
Review: Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, is based on a premise which is undoubtedly correct, that geography has affected history. Unfortunately for readers who expected a sholarly treatment of the subject, the book only serves to detail the author's prejudices. Perhaps the book was written with college freshmen in mind as the audience; it is doubtful anyone else would be impressed with the author's very selective use of facts, his unproven assertions, or his hysterical invective against Europeans, however politically correct that literary style is at present. The author cannot even mention European explorers without placing quotation marks around the word "explorers". In the absence of any evidence of objectivity, it is difficult to take seriously any of his assertions. Repetitious in the extreme, the book is by no means worth the time.
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Summary: Defining new field in study of human cultures
Review: This book should be on everyone's "Must-Read List." Diamond explores the relationships between the development of human technologies and their regional geographic environments. He shows how environment either limits or permits the exchange of new ideas and technologies, and he shows that many cultural developments which we have tended to view as accidents of history are, in fact, the logical results of the geographical/geological orientations of continents. Diamond's analysis of human cultural development is pertinent not just to development on our own planet, but on any planet with similar geological characteristics (oceans, continents, plate tectonics). No science fiction writer should ever again attempt to invent an alien society on a distant planet without first reading this book. There is an inherent logic to all evolutionary processes, and this book illuminates that logic in a manner that everyone with a high school education can understand. In addition, this book is a fascinating source of ideas for geographical, anthropological, and historical research. It must be considered the first volume in a new field of research: the history of human cultural and technological evolution. How does this differ from, for example, the history of science or the history of technology or the history of culture? Well, it combines all of these areas and includes the principles of environmental geography. Traditionally, the study of history has ignored most geographical factors and concentrated instead on the lives of rulers and the works of "great men." Diamond shows the foundational necessities which make it possible for those "great men" of history to exist and produce. Historical events don't just happen -- they happen as a result of a long series of causes-and-effects which go back to the movement of tectonic plates over millions of years -- on geological time scales. For example, we often point to Leonardo da Vinci as a foundational thinker in the history of technological development. However, da Vinci did not spring up from nothing. Before da Vinci, there were Erasmus and Copernicus, and both of them would never have been exposed to Arab mathematics without the crusades, and Arabs would not have been able to develop a rich mathematical and scientific body of work without contacts with the ancient Greek and ancient Indo-Persian manuscripts assembled in Baghdad after the Islamic Conquest. There would have been no Islam without the long history of trade amongst and by various Semitic tribes around the Red Sea, there would have been no Red Sea without the collision between Africa and Eurasia and the subsequent rifting in the Afar triangle. One can, in fact, start with the waterways and trade routes between the Mediterranean region and India and shoe how cultural evolution was entirely dependent upon them. No one should write history any more without considering these influences. In summary, Diamond's book is profoundly important for many reasons and should significantly influence the way we study history, anthropology, and evolution from now on. For a longer, more in-depth review, please visit my website at www.geocities.com/Vienna/Studio/5484
Rating: 
Summary: not so hot
Review: i found the book unenlightening, ploddingly written, and agenda-ridden. diamond has some contributions to make, but his book is deterministic, p.c., and self-congratulatory -- ie., very '60s. '60s folks looking for some "science" to back up their prejudices should be happy with the book. readers looking for the science and the thinking to take precedence may be disappointed. as diamond presents his thesis about geography's impact on the development of civilizations, it doesn't just condition human existence, it determines it, it explains everything. a little modesty wouldn't have hurt. and isn't it worth at least toying with ideas of this sort, for example: that the reason a group of hunter-gatherers didn't become farmers was because they chose not to? diamond doesn't once, that i recall, discuss the question of human preferences and choices. evidently for him they count for nothing. diamond's p.c. agenda seemed to me to distort his thought processes. for example, he denounces anyone who makes the claim that one population group may be more intelligent or gifted in some way than another -- fine. but then he goes on to confide that he thinks the new guineans he knew were smarter than europeans. ooops. he thinks he's scored a point. but didn't he, or his editor, notice a little logic problem here? invasions and migrations of populations are matters of fact for diamond -- until it's europeans doing the invading or migrating, at which time they're described as murderous. all of which -- and much more -- made me conclude that diamond is more intent on fitting his many, many facts and occasional not-bad idea into a p.c. scheme than he is on trying to make a little sense out of history and life. and as a writer for the general audience, diamond is only passable -- not in a class with e.o. wilson, or pinker, or paul davies. overall, a disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: A few excellent points but too much repitition
Review: His discussion of domesticating plants and animals, germs, axis and barriers was brilliant. The only nagging question I had was his assumption that if something didn't happen it must be impossible. If Africans didn't domesticate animals then they must be impossible to domesticate. The interesting part of the book is only about half its contents. The rest is filler - a combination of repitition, politically correct musings and historical tid bits. It would have been nice if he had instead spent the space addressing some of the arguments for and against his theories.
Rating:
Summary: Wealth of information, but keep your guard up
Review: The book takes the point of view that geography determines the success of societies and cultures for ALL time. It is a good read for those who like to know more about human history, especially the early part (before 500 BC). However, the book's basic premise, that culture is of little account, is hard for this reader to accept. Some of the explanations are essentially 'just so' stories. Also, others may not be able too, but I can ignore Diamond's occasional bow to political correctness (e.g. Columbus "discovered" America; many pages on the evil Spanish conquistadores) and use the text to learn about Polynesia, Africa, and the Americas. Certainly, in the early stages of human history, geography plays a big role. It also dictates where people will face too many difficulties (due to limited resources or extreme temperatures) such that they won't succeed. But his overall theme is hard to swallow as an understanding of how some groups succeed, while others don't. In fact, he contradicts himself several times. Native North Americans were dispersed, so they could not get together effectively. Yet China is viewed as one big lump, which leads to an overly strong central government that stifles development. Well, which is it? (Or must it be 'just right' -- shades of Toynbee's challenge&response.) The last chapter is absolutely the worst, because he is explaining differences between civilizations after (approx.) the year 1500. Yet by now everybody knows about guns and steel! His approach is to look at a map, and explain success or failure by whatever he happens to comes up with. Mountains that hinder travel? Or not enough to keep out the barbarian hordes? You get the idea. Still... it has much material that will please anyone who likes to pick up an encylopedia and read about this or that place or time in human history. And it is always good to keep in mind that geography has some effect. But it's not quite as deterministic as Diamond would have you believe.
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