Rating: 
Summary: Social Science Validates the Laws of Thermodynamics
Review: Several years ago while on a business trip to Portland, Oregon, we were given an informal tour of the Boeing Company's automated steel milling facility. This is the place where all major steel components for the entire Boeing product line are precisely milled by multi-tonned computer-controlled cutting machines. Until that time, like a space-age Yali, I wondered why B-747s were not produced in Uganda. A brief description by our host of the complex processes and industrial infrastructure that lead up to the arrival of the parts and materials at the door of the Portland factory was a marvelous revelation. Dr. Diamond's treatise captures the essence of that revelation and articulates better than any I have seen. Tim McDonough
PhD Student of Political Economy
University of Texas at Dallas
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: I read this book after becoming intrigued by the review it recieved from the N.Y. Times. The question posed by the work is one that I have wondered about on occasion but have never seen directly addressed; namely, why have different societies reached widely varying levels of comlexitiy and technolgical development? In exploring this question the author puts together a logical and compelling history of human civilizations. I was particularly interested in the theories of plant and animal domesticaiton, and of the association of human diseases and animal contact. The development of written language was also presented in a fascinating manner. I came away from the book with a sense of awe that human societies have evolved to the complexity that they have, given the difficulties in achieving even seemingly simple goals such as sustainable agriculture. It is rare to find a work as thought provoking as this. My one criticism of the book is that there were times when there was more repetition than necessary to make a point. This fact did not interfere, however, with my enjoyment of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Subject, but dry at times
Review: I found that authors theories reminded me of PsycoHistory, the discipline founded by Hari Sheldon, from Asimov's Foundation Series. Maybe he's on to something....
Rating:
Summary: Excellent telescopic view of human history
Review: In his attempt to explain why Europeans became dominant, Diamond asks and answers many questions along the way. He is very specific regarding comparative geography, climate, availability of domesticable plants and animals. Sometimes, in his willingness to address all questions Diamond is forced to speculate. Even then, he is logical and provides as much fact as he can to support his hypotheses. In attempting to debunk racist theories, he demonstrates how Polynesian societies became diverse because of diverse environmental factors despite physical commonalities. There were hunter gatherers and agricultural societies, conquerors and conquered. The book is scholarly, well structured, very enjoyable and readable. It progresses in such a way as to provoke questions and then goes on to answer each one. A well developed reading list at the end of the book, corresponding to each chapter ,encourages the reader to read other works. Anyone who has read "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, which is a novel that focuses on the causes and consequences of modern civilization, should read "Guns Germs and Steel"
Rating:
Summary: an ambitious survey of the evolution of civilization
Review: In contrast to the reviewer who characterized this book as "marred by cant", I found very little in the way of political axgrinding in this work. Other than a reference to the "Bell Curve" genre of studies which seek to expose an ethographic causation for intelligence distribution, I found Diamond judicious and discreet in avoiding political or rhetorical cheerleading. His survey of the growth of human societies was informed and fascinating. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in comparative culture or natural science
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful scholarship and writing marred by cant
Review: July 8, 1997
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
At least I bought the book from AMAZON ! I give it a well-deserved 5/10.
The 5 is for the excellent writing and the breathtaking scholarship. I give Jared Diamond a U for analysis and idealogical cant . Starting from a promising and evocative premise Mr. Diamond ends with a load of scholarly fudge so tainted by current fashionable thinking that his great enterprise is very much diminished.
"How is it that you white people have developed all this cargo and brought it to New Guinea and we black people have no cargo ?" The question is seminal. You have more than enough for yourselves and can bring it here and almost give it away; and we have none. Good cheap fish hooks; transistor radios, with batteries; small reliable electric generators; outboard motors that can pull against the fastest-rushing river currets; beautiful rifles that can bring down game at 300 meters; satellite television; --- cargo, cargo, cargo. Diamond doesn't see the poignancy of the question, he's too busy trying to show his humanity, political correctness and he is on his knees begging for forgiveness from our very insightful Yali. In this case at least, I agree with the author, this New Guinean has more intelligence than at least one Western academic.
Pizzaro was a bad boy. Pestilential vectors operating through close living with animals gave immunity to infection. Colonial loathsomeness. What has this got to do with cargo ?
Yali knows the truth: some civilizations are indeed better than others. Some are indeed more humane and more productive and allow more freedom for human development than others and only an intellectual caught in the web of his own nitpicking could believe otherwise. I do not doubt the innate intelligence of people everywhere, but tick-tack-ticking on a keyboard by a computer operator is several orders of magnitude from the accretion of science and multi-layered technologies that brought Western civilization from Euclid and Archimedes to a 4-million device computer chip.
But, but, you say, old Ed Wilson says its a good book. The great Paul Ehrlich the grandaddy of population studies, writes an approving note. As the old adage has it "I'll write a blurb for your book but please don't make me read it."
Look, I don't want be mean about this but it seems the only way we can reform this kind of wrongheadedness is by refusing to participate. Take your mate to the driving range and shoot a pail of balls. Have dinner out at MacDonalds on me. Save your money in an S&P Index based fund (currently paying 29%). This book was a shrewdly designed marketing plan by WWNorton: with the proliferation of multicultural courses in America's universities, there's almost a built-in sale of about 20,000 books and that will pay for the costs of production and then some. The rest is gravey.
Rating:
Summary: A Triple, But Not a Home Run
Review: I love this sort of book, and it is relatively well written. See the other comments for what's good . . . here's what could be improved.
State the conclusion early on. We have an idea where the author is headed, so there's no need to try to pull us into the book to see what the mystery is all about. Just state simply and succinctly what the conclusion is and a brief list of the primary supporting data. Then let us judge whether the book supports these.
Don't be so repetitive -- especially toward the last five chapters.
Don't gloss over inconsistent data that is not supportive of the theory. For instance, it isn't enough to simply write off the Alps and Carpathian Mtns as insignificant obstacles to the migration of animals, foods and ideas. At least tell us why (easily navigated passes, alternate routes, etc.)
Finally, raise and answer (or dispose of) the obvious questions that follow upon your premise: e.g., did the geographic differences and diversity of flora and fauna effect the evolution of the peoples as well as their history?
All of the above said, I do recommend the book
Rating:
Summary: Winning through Diversity
Review: Why did Western Civilization defeat its competitors? The short answer, according to Guns, Germs and Steel, is that it had the benefit of greater diversity, and that this diversity was the gift of geography. More kinds of domesticated plants and more kinds of domesticated large animals were available across Eurasia. More kinds of food meant more people, thus more kinds of diseases (which other peoples weren't immune to) and also more new ideas. Diamond does a great job developing this concept and exploring the implications. Definitely a must read
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Summary: Answered questions I've wondered about for years
Review: I ordered this book from one of my book clubs, hoping it might be good. By the time I was halfway through it, I was raving about it so much that my local library had ordered a copy sight unseen, a friend almost took it away from me before I could finish it, and god only knows how many people he will pass it on to. I may never see it again. It had never occured to me that some continents have a plethora of domesticatible animals and plants and some simply don't. This is a complex book and would take pages and pages to review properly. Suffice it to say that I read 10 to 20 books a week and haven't been caught by a book like this in years. DON'T MISS THIS ONE!
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating history of the world
Review: I thought this was a simply amazing book. Diamond's singular talent is to bring knowledge from a disparate array of natural and social sciences into a meaningful, coherent whole. Diamond examines the world and its peoples throught the lenses of linguistics, geography, botany, zoology, sociology, and epidemiology and somehow combines them all to create a theory of human history. This book addresses many fascinating questions most of us have probably never really thought about, but which can explain a lot about history. How come when Europeans, mounted on horseback, colonized Africa, they weren't met by Arficans mounted on Zebras and Rhinos? How come Europeans decimated indegenous Americans with their diseases, instead of vice versa? Diamond marshalls compelling evidence to show that a populations' intitial advantages in terms of readily domesticatible plants and animals, more than anything else, explains the ultimate fates of human societies. In terms of sheer knowledge, I learned more from this book than any I have ever read
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