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Summary: Review of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates o
Review: The author's intent in writing Guns, Germs, and Steel is to explain how the different peoples of the world came to be the way they are. His intent is to prove his own belief that the reason mankind is the way it is because of its geography. By geography it means that different geographical areas with varying climates and natural resources directly influenced the path that mankind took in becoming the way it is today. It is, in a way, an attempt to explain human history in a way that it could have been predicted. However, it is arrogant to think that it was man's destiny to be this way. It is arrogant to think that the Spaniards were meant to conquer the Inca's and Aztec's and not have the Inca's conquer them. Luckily, the author points this out and makes it his intent to discover why it is not the other way around. If the events that are told are factual, he came upon the idea of explaining human history when a politician from New Guinea named asked him why the white man discovered such technological wonders instead of, say, a New Guinea highlander. The author realizes that most answers given would seem racist and sets out to discover why. Basically, he intends to answer Yali's question. He intends to look at human history as a science. He intends to only make assumptions based on scientific evidence and on a basis of solid genetics and logic. He intends to write a book to end all history books. He intends to give an argument so solid, so carefully planned, that no one could possibly argue with it. He intends to think of every possibility and examine every one of them to finalize its validity. In short, he intends to write a history of man that explains how we became the technology driven, world controlling, diverse peoples that we are. The author goes about explaining humanity by carefully examining every theory as to why different cultures in different regions evolved so differently from each other. Naturally the first thing he disproves is that there is a difference genetically in the peoples themselves. His discoveries prove quite contrary to the racist beliefs of the past. Modern medicine has taken the "civilized" world out of natural selection. However, the "uncivilized" portion of the world is still very much at nature's whim. Natural selection certainly doesn't favor the stupid or weak, so genetically the "uncivilized" are probably far superior to the "civilized". Analysis based on logic such as this takes up most of the book. Eventually the author settles that the turning point in deciding uncivilized versus civilized for a society is when that society adopted agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle. He deduces that a sedentary, agricultural lifestyle encouraged technological advancements and allowed for population growth and expansion. A certain amount of land can support more agricultural people then hunter-gatherer people. Through sheer numbers agriculture and therefore "civilization" spread across the world. Naturally the areas to discover agriculture first became more advanced quicker. Therefore natural resources played a big role. However, for this to be accepted as fact one must first analyze why agriculture arose in some areas and not others, how plants are domesticated and so on and so forth. Every explanation leads to ten more needed explanations which leads to 100 more explanations which continues for a couple hundred pages. Everything is thought of and no detail or factor of human history is left out, right down to how plants were probably domesticated through surprises found in excretions, the main way plants go about spreading from place to place. The details are accompanied by numerous graphs, tables, maps and pictures, which either repeat the details or explain them even more. The author goes about his task so meticulously and carefully that the details begin to bog everything down. Where the author is going with the information or why he is explaining so many details is often never explained. Some details seem unnecessary and irrelevant. Whatever point the author is trying to make is often lost in the details. The author goes about his task of explaining humanity by analyzing events in history and going into great detail as to how we came to be the way we are. However, the way it feels is that the author wants to bore the reader into submission in believing his view. The book is successful in what it was trying to accomplish, in that it logically explains how humanity came to be the way it is. However, it is not successful in being at all enjoyable. I felt as though I was being bombarded with facts and smothered with useless information. I suppose I was persuaded to believe that geography and its contributing factors lead to humanity being the way it is, but does it really matter? Were the hours I spent reading this book at all necessary? Was this book necessary? This book leaves me with questions like that. This book leaves me unsatisfied. Not once did it even try to answer or even pose the question as to whether civilized or uncivilized life is better. Not once does it attempt to tackle whether civilized life is more worthwhile or enjoyable or more rewarding. It seems to only answer questions that it can answer and avoid all that it can't. It seems afraid to try to answer questions of a more philosophical nature. The book concentrates so much on being only facts that it bored me to death. It hides from speaking opinions so much that it also hides from being even remotely interesting. Opinions may at times be controversial, but they are never boring. How this book won the Pulitzer Prize I do not know. This book was a boring collection of facts and logic. I would advise the reader of this review to ignore this book completely. Don't read this book unless you are in desperate need of a long nap.
Rating: 
Summary: ambitious, interesting, pedantic, limited
Review: Diamond demonstrates well that European success in colonizing vast parts of the world is not a result of racial superiority. His reconstruction of biological, geographical, and demographical factors is fascinating. I wish, however, that he had a more heavy-handed editor. The book is pedantic. He bombards the reader with evidence that often exceeds what is necessary to establish his case. Moreover, in playing to his personal strengths (biology and linguistics) he gives grossly inadequate attention to other perspectives, such as economics and general cultural factors. (For example, race advantaged no one, but this book also provides examples of how racism and zenophobia could both help and hinder.) His survey of the history of the forms of social organization is superficial. His theories about the nature of history are also issues for debate. He seems to think that history moves from something toward something with necessity and purpose. Can one speak meaningfully about the broad patterns of history? Professional historians argue about this. (Speaking of historiographical problems, if great men can't take the credit for innovation, per Diamond's position, why does he blame a single Chinese ruler for stopping innovation? Does the course of Chinese history really hang on a single cranky ruler?) To conclude, even while showing how central the domestication of plants and animals were for the evolution of human societies, Diamond acknowledges that these factors are fundamental but not deterministic. In the end, Diamond provides only part of an answer--albeit a stimulating one. I screamed and groaned often when reading, but I'm glad I read this book.
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Summary: Need a sixth star here!
Review: Jared Diamond has shown that history can be studied by scientific principles after all. He goes beyond all cultural cliches, norms and prejudices and draws the big picture relying on numerous branches of science and evidence alone. It really is a big picture, story of our civilizations, expertly and efficiently stuffed into less than 500 pages.It is just fascinating. The conquest and inhabitation of huge spans of our globe by people who had such "primitive" technology, especially the story of Madagascar was just incredible. Note that, he was directly involved with only some of the related research, he has mostly gathered and analyzed the works of many who had already done excellent research in the area. His writing is very readable, enjoyable and also friendly. His logic and reasoning are solid. It is just amusing, scanning through some of the commentary below, how many people got it so wrong. It is quite ironic that he has employed the very "Western" science and technology to reach to the inevitable conclusions that have come under attack by the staunch "guardians" of the Western "castle". It is hardly about East vs West as some seem to have perceived it. My 13 year-old son just inhaled the whole book and declared it the best thing he ever read and we had long discussions on it for quite sometime. What else can I add to this?
Rating: 
Summary: Very good - except one oversight
Review: This is a very good book - a scientific approach to world history. However, there is one thing missing that has not been mentioned in any review I checked so I decided to write mine. Maybe the most important question only partially answered is why it was Western Europe and not Middle East or China that would end up on the top. One geographical factor Dr Diamond largely ignores is the Inner Eurasian Steppe and its inhabitants. Because of environmental factors they were forced to practice nomadic pastoralism that was not very conducive to scientific and cultural advancement. However, it helped them to gain a formidable military ascendancy as expert horse-archers. Therefore, Attila, Chingish Khan, Timur Lenk and a bunch of other Turco-Mongol khagans were able to defeat their sedentary neighbours and create vast but short-lived empires. They attacked China, Persia, India and Middle East quite a many times, and conquered them a few times, causing enormous destruction every time but contributing very little to the advancement of any of the societies affected. On the other hand, Western Europe was protected against them quite effectively by Eastern and Central European forests, Carpathians, Alps and a few other mountain ranges. The most western steppe region is the Hungarian Plain, and it is too small to support a large Steppe army (100 000 mounted warriors, 1/2 - 1 million horses) for any length of time. Therefore, Western Europe was really endangered only twice - by Huns when the Roman Empire collapsed, and by Mongols in the thirteenth century, and both attacks eventually failed.
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Summary: You'll actually feel smarter after reading this!
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It is the perfect overview of an incredibly wide range of scientific and social science topics relating to humanity's development. Perfect for a layman like me, because points are explained in a way that's very easily digested. (Actually, perhaps a bit too much... the author frequently repeats himself to make sure we remember what he said a few pages back.) You will feel a lot smarter -- honestly -- after you read "Guns, Germs, and Steel". It deals with important information, much of which I had either never heard or never really understood previously. I had any number of "wow, now I understand!" moments as I read it. The author is very forthcoming in specifying whether he is dealing with solid science or mere speculation, and everything he says rings true. And even when he gets a bit PC about the nobility of non-western cultures, he's also honest about their shortcomings. And the success of the West is put in a context that shows amazing cross-cultural similarities. The society that has "the right stuff" is going to prevail, often brutally -- and it's been happening in much the same way for 15,000 years, not just 500.
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Summary: Just too long
Review: Although the subject of GG&S is interesting, and does shed some light on why, when and how different civilizations originated/developed, the book is so repetitive, that I did not bother to read the last 50 pages. Mr Diamond would have done a much better job explaining his ideas in a 150 pages, rather than in 400+ pages.
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Summary: Interesting book
Review: I teach world history at the high school level. Sometimes students will ask me why Europeans were able to so "easily" conquer and take over so much of the earth. This book attempts to provide an explanation to this question. The book poses some interesting ideas/theories that really makes one think about the fates of human societies. It made me really think about how a few hundred Spanish conquistadors could conquer empires of millions like the Aztecs and Inca as opposed to those empires conquering Europe. It's not the easiest reading in the world, but sustains interest for the most part. I would recommend this book, but be prepared to sit and read it in a quiet place without any distractions.
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Summary: Fascinating!
Review: The 28 page annotated bibliography, alone, would make Professor Diamond's book worthy of the purchase price. As an additional, priceless benefit he convincingly demonstrates for us the determining impacts of geography, environment, agriculture, epidemiology, and "just-plain-dumb-luck" upon history. By doing so, he cuts through racist explanations of history, as cleanly as Alexander cut through the Gordian knot. In Dr. Diamond's world, there is no such thing as manifest destiny. There are only people who are more, or less, blessed and joined together by their common humanity. That's an anthropology to which we can all subscribe!
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Summary: Another Great Book Being Unfarily Attacked onPoliticalGround
Review: I enjoyed this book because it gave me another perspective on why the world is the way it is. I've always wondered why the Western civilizations flourished, while many of the tribal societies, like those of the Americas, Africa and Austraila were defeated by Westerners. Were these people inately inferior, or did their environment have something to do with their defeat? Guns, Germs, and Steel takes the position that you do not NECESSARILY have to conclude that these people are inferior because they are defeated people. The book attempts to explain how these tribal societies' environments could account for why these people were defeated by Westerners. Despite the popular MISCONCEPTION of this book, the author does not pretend that he is presenting an iron-clad case that these people's environment HAD to have been the cause for their defeat. Like any rational scientist, he doesn't conclude that these people WEREN'T innately inferior (biologically, for example) in some way. No, he does no such thing. What he is doing is answering this question right here: If these tribal societies didn't contain inferior humans (inferior in some sort of biological, innate way), then how do you account for their "backwards societies" and their constant defeat by Westerners. The book concludes that there is enough information about these groups environments to make the case that these people didn't NECESSARILY have to be inferior peoples just because they were defeated. This is a subtle point that too many people missed. So in other words, according to the conclusions of this book, it would be a weak argument to conclude that these people of tribal societies HAD to be inferior because they were defeated people, and because they didn't advance in the similar way that WEstern society advanced. Oh, and unlike what the reviewer below said, the authoer NEVER said anything about the New Guini people being superior to Westerners, or for anyone for that matter. What he did do, in one little paragraph in the book, was use the commonly used argument for why these people HAD to be inferior, and show how it could be turned around for why these people HAD to be superior. He wasn't writing out an argument for why these aborignals were smarter, but instead, using the method of showing how you can lead to two contradictory conclusions using the same argument. And what was that argument? It was just the basic "commen-sense" approach to looking at the world, instead of the rational and empirical based approach of science. The author most likely used this little example to show why empiricism and rational thought are better methods for discovering truths than using your superficial "common-sense" analysis, since in this example, the "common-sense" analysis" lead to contradictory conclusions. It amazes me how people have painted this book into a left/right category. It isn't a political book. Those that call it PC or liberal propaganda are those that tend to not be interested in finding the truth about the world around them, but instead, only interested in finding evidence to back up their own personal ideologies. Well, guys, sometimes, the world doesn't act like you want it to. Just because a book's conclusions may be well accepted in today's PC climate (which I admit, we are living in a society that has an excess amount of political correctnes), and this conclusion being that the non-Westerners aren't NECESSARILY biologically inferior to Westerners, doesn't mean that it is biased in anyway. Only the weak and shallowed minded people would conclude that because a liberal may like this book, or because its message would be one that would not be attacked by the PC elite, that this book must therefore be biased and corrupted in someway. Oh, and by the way, since when did it mean you are liberal, or brainwashed by political correctness if you happen to believe that all men were created equal?
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Summary: Propaganda
Review: It took me only about ten pages to determine that the author has an agenda and is using the book to further it. Here is a guy who embraces everything "other civilizations" offer and utterly rejects the contributions of western civilization. Like his personal experience working on a ranch, where the only worthy individual was an American Indian. Everyone else was some kind of scum. I could only take enough examples of his distorted thinking, before I became ill with this garbage and put the book aside. My great regret is my loss of money in buying this completely distorted and unwise edition. This guy is responsible, in many ways, for the thinking of so many kids coming out of our schools today who say (with feigned sagacity) "I won't be reading any books written by white European men."
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