Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: An excellent read for anyone interested in the development of world cultures. Brief as it is, it still touches on a great many fundamentals that explain, with detail for a book of its size, the fates of human societies. Of coarse not all things are linked as simply as Jared Diamond suggests, but his points are excellent. The book is well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Title Misleading
Review: A great book to read. If I was to tell you to read a book about plant and animal domestication, environmental effects on life, and geography. You would probably say "boring". Well this book is anything but boring and really sheds light on the beginning of human life and why some cultures got a head start in dominating the world we live in. Guns, Germs, and Steel are really the end results of what the book talks about.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking, excellent book
Review: I don't know what book the first reviewers read, but I didn't get any racial or political viewpoint from this book. His conclusions, that food and animal domestication lead to domination, I already knew and agreed. However, I had no idea how this was accomplished. I learned much from this book and thoroughly enjoyed reading it,
Rating: 
Summary: huh?
Review: It is difficult to believe that the Pulitzer committee would give its prize to such an haphazard collection of wild speculations and outlandish conclusions. Diamond's own political agenda is his business. But passing this book off as some sort of 'scientific' support of those misguided ideals goes beyond the pale. I only hope that anyone else reading this tripe will see through it as easily.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating book, but the central thesis is not original.
Review: In 1972 Professor Diamond, challenged by a Papuan friend, considered the question "Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way." He relates that he didn't have an answer then," but twenty-five years later concluded that "History followed different courses because of differences among peoples' environment, not because of differences among peoples themselves." In 1962, at the end of his book "The Origin of Races," Carleton S. Coon wrote, "Caucasoids and Mongoloids who live in their homelands and in recently colonized regions, such as North America, did not rise to their present population levels and positions of cultural dominance by accident. They achieved this because their ancestors occupied the most favorable of the earths zoological regions, in which other kinds of animals also attained dominance during the Pleistocene. These regions had challenging climates and ample breeding grounds and were centrally located within continental land masses. There general adaptation was more important than special adaptation. Any other subspecies that had evolved in these regions would probably have been just as successful."
Rating: 
Summary: Academic posture OK, but, misses the boat...
Review: Guns, Germs, and Steel, starts with a great title, and an impressive premise in the form a compelling question. As posed by a native of New Guinea, a friend of the author who in some ways reminded me of Watson asking Holmes how he knew the man sitting in the parlor collected postage stamps and took the morning express from the Highlands... Hmmm,not so elementary,Watson...your question. Or maybe even closer to the mark, the scene where Crusoe meets Friday, the fellow who becomes Robinson Crusoe's man servant and friend when Crusoe is ship wrecked on the native island. You get the idea... The question posed is essentially, how come the Wests got so much cargo? i.e., stuff, and we New Guineans don't. The book details and examines the question in an academic's way of looking at things,and as a result,the book's greatest strength is also its weakness. ( In all fairness I must say that I didn't read the whole book, the reason being that the bookstore was closing soon, and I had come there to find a CD anyway...) Nevertheless, I got enough of the sense of it to say that,hey, Professor, nice try but you missed a kind of important point -- entirely. I don't mean to sound facetious, at least not entirely. All the factors that Diamond considers, the ones he gives weight to are in their own way very interesting, and I'm sure, valid points... Environment is crucial. Mountains make nice walls for people to peek over and see what the guys next door are doing to solve problem A, B, or C, and how can they copy or innovate their own answer to it. Or better yet, just take them over by force and steal it. That's always been a standard human approach to problem solving-- theft. However,environment aside for a moment,excuse me but didn't you leave something kind of important out of your analysis? Wasn't Religion a somewhat significant thing in the West? This incredibly potent force which has propelled Western history for two thousand years,this titanic need to, shall we say share our conception of God with our neighbors, whether or not they have invited us to the party, isn't that pretty much standard Western mentality and normal proceedure? Bring in more advanced technology, impose religious beliefs, crush obstacles or people who are crushable. Take what they have,in the name of religion and manefest destiny. Hasn't that been the because in answer to the West's global hegimony. Religion driven motives propelled by all the other factors and issues mentioned in the book,of course. But when you write a book attempting to shed light on this question of why the West (won or took depending on your vantage point) the West, and the World, by extention, it seems kind of important to mention this little thing called Religion... Having said this, and I apologize if I missed the chapter on religion, there are many wonderful nuggets in the book. It's definitely worth a read. I especially liked the photographs of the people. I do think we tend to forget what people living in other lands look like, innundated as we are with idealized images of ourselves. Though I consider myself to be almost completely egalitarian and free from predjudice, I was amazed to see in how many ways my own thinking is strongly biased. For example, I did think of the natives of New Guinea as some kind of stone age peoples lacking in some way in what we so confidently think of as intelligence. The book forced me to look at my own reactions to peoples, and made me realize just how biased I am in so many ways, consciously, and unconsciously. As for the future, well, I'm afraid Diamond's as much in dark as anyone in predicting where we are going... English has ascended to the preeminant language of the world, and we are the lucky recepients of this fate, or accident of history. But intelligence and geography, and human needs will shift. The Chinese, as we are learning lately in Washington have been vastly underated. Perhaps we'd be wise to begin reading more books about Chinese history, philosophy, and, ehem, religion.
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Summary: Now this is the way a scientist sees history. Evolutionary.
Review: I'm glad I read the book before I read the reviews. JD developes his assumptions and hypotheses in the in the manner of a scientist. He introduces his ideas and than brings out the material to support them. The result is a new view of how the Europeans came to dominate the planet. I don't think his intention was to demonstrate the superiority of a "racial" group. I approached this book with hightened expectation, having read his "The Arrow of Disease" in Discover Magazine. I liked this book because JD took things we all knew about, and looked at their importance in a different way, and presented it in a cogent and interesting manner. If he desired to engender discussion and debate, he was successful. I saw the Eurasian success from a new perspective. Although I never considered that we are where we are today as a gift from God, I must admit to having absorbed the ideas of my culture. JD showed that things, even using earlier information, might be different - and why it might be so. The author was not didactic. Ideas were not rigid. He did not set out to explain why English succeeded, and the Ottoman Turks did not (or did they - for a while). He did not set out to - once again - tell us some of us are smart (intelligent) and some of us are dumb (not intelligent, or not AS intelligent as . . . WHO?). This book was another view of how things got to be the way they are. In the book, It's a Wonderful Life, by Stephen Jay Gould, Gould makes a point about evolution and Homo sapien (that's us, folks). Its a crap shoot. Roll the dice again, and Homo sapien might not even show up at the table. Yep, not a plan, not Manifest Destiny, not the White Man's Burden, not God's Will - just a lot of luck, and as one wag pointed out, Location, location, location. I recommend this book to anyone who's reasonably intelligent, and enjoys the challenge of new ideas.
Rating:
Summary: For best results combine Diamond with Landes
Review: I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I do agree with some of the previous reviews about the author repeating some ideas to many times. Also, would the statement about New Guineans being on the average more intelligent than Europeans qualify as a racist remark? On a more serious note, several other reviewers compare the book with Landes' Wealth & Poverty of Nations '. I think both books complement each other well. The geographical and ecological factors that Diamond weaves so well to support his ideas began mattering less and less as mankind's technological capabilities grew. Then a paradigm shift took place and the factors discussed in the Landes ( culture, government, policy, etc.) book began determining success. In my view Diamond explains human history from BC 12000 to AD 1300-1400, Landes after this date. This would explain why different European countries of similar backgrounds fared so differently after 1500 AD. Now that everyone seems to be converging on market oriented and efficiency driven societies any ideas anyone on what the next paradigm shift will be? Although I recommend it the Landes book also has several annoying things but that is another story.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book! New Ideas! Fails to explain Western success
Review: The question is why the West has so much baggage. Diamond then shows that some societies are more lucky than others. There are only so many types of plants and animals that humans can use. Thus some socieites in Africa, the Americas before the Europeans came had a disadvantage. Then throw in the Germs and you have a very convincing, well presented theory. But cultures rise and decline. What caused Europe to borrow from others and then achieve a new level of technology? Other cultures covered in the book had the same geographical/resource advantages as the Europeans. So why did the Ottoman Empire with all its advantages, not dominate all of Europe? Guess there are some things we can never know for sure. They just happened.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: I'm glad to see that this book has gained an award and considerable popularity since I first read it. I still think it is one of the most important historical books around. If the previous "reader from USA" who gave this book one star had actually read it, he would have the answers to all his questions.
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