Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ... But is it relavant today?
Review: An interesting analysis of history. A little repetative at times. The question that came to me as I finished this book: Just how relavant this is today? Is geography and food production still an important factor in cultural dominance or has Technology - especially Telecommunication and Transportation technologies - negated or replaced these factors so important to our past.
Rating: 
Summary: Special
Review: The book has a good deal of valuable history and science in it. Unfortunately, they are put to an unworthy use. Diamond is intent on reminding us that western culture does not deserve its dominant place in the world. Not that western culture didn't have the natural assets he deems useful. It's that western culture isn't nice enough or smart enough to be where it is. There are some laughably transparent cases of special pleading. One of his New Guinea tribes must be smarter than practically anybody else because most meetings with a stranger have a potential for lethal combat. That they can figure out how to escape such an introduction must mean they're smart. How about they're dumb to have such a culture? A vague and huge ancient language group includes both North Africa and classical Greece. This should, he says, surprise people who think Greece is notable by itself. As if the glory that was Greece should be spread out to North Africa because their proto-language might have been the same. Or the North Africans started the whole thing. Pizarro defeated the Incas because the Inca was illiterate. The Inca didn't understand the depths of European duplicity. Not having read some European history. The Inca in question had just conquered a rival in a bloody civil war, but was a child in intrigue. Who takes this stuff seriously? One blurb on the jacket told us that the book was going a long way in the battle against racism. I should have known.
Rating: 
Summary: Refreshing Encompassing Ideas
Review: I just finished reading the book and found it well written and thought-provoking. Each chapter is laid out in well-organized manner and the narrative flows nicely from start to finish. The material has the potential to be very dry, yet the author manages to sustain reader interest throughout the book.While readers will doubtlessly disagree with many of the ideas that the author puts forth, they are presented with great clarity and style. Like any well-written book, "Guns, Germs and Steel" stimulates reflection upon the nature of mankind and the development of societies around the world. I am surprised at some of the reviews which put forth the notion that the book is somehow "anti-Western Civilization." As a student of history, I believe that one can learn from many different perspectives and the examination of different societies is not "pro" or "anti" anything. The book presents a lot of food for thought which the reader should find illuminating.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME!
Review: The word for this book is awesome. It challenges the mind and the conscience both in detailing the history of human civilization. Not many history books do this. The history in the book is wonderful. The scientific element of the book is sometimes difficult to understand, but with patience the reader will be greatly rewarded! This book is a must buy for every student of human history.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Thought Provoking
Review: In his preface to the paperback edition, Jared Diamond boldly states, "This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years." Following this startling statement, he writes, "The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents?" Keeping these two aims in mind is quite helpful while reading through the book, and I found that while Diamond certainly can't answer all the questions (he doesn't even attempt this), he does suggest many plausible explanations for why history has unfolded like it has (such as advantages of geography, fertility, agriculture vs. hunter-gathering societies, east-west vs. north-south spread of technology and crops etc.) For a different approach that emphasizes culture and economic explanations, try reading David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations in conjunction with this book. Among the many things I liked about this book were the following: it is extensively researched (as one might expect from a UCLA physiology professor), the style is easy to follow, it is full of photographs, tables, and maps (I'm a big believer that "a picture is worth a thousand words"), and his questions and search for answers are fair minded. Diamond himself would not insist that this book is the "definitive" explanation for our existence, but an attempt to help put pieces of the puzzle together in a coherent fashion (including the often ignored "prehistorical" period that really set the stage for how things turned out in the "historical" period.) This is a splendid book.
Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: exactly the kind of book I enjoy reading...the cuniform tablet was interesting, but why did the author presume that the writer went from outward to inward, rather than from inward towards outward, where there may be more space. and speaking of space didn't NASA send a similar disc out into space on what we now call a CD rom, and does anyone "out-there" - reading this believe for a moment that any-being will ever find, read, or understand the junk that was inscribed on it? Maybe the cuniform was a decorative peice inscribed by a bored interior designer. Anyway, it was great reading and looking for more thought provoking books.
Rating:
Summary: Tantalizing but not compelling
Review: Jared Diamond provides an original perspective on the fates of human societies. His thesis is that the fates of all human societies has been to a large extent predetermined in remote historic times by the fertility of the soil and the relative abundance or scarcity of cultivatable plants and domesticatable animals. The fundamental intelligence and drive of all peoples are similar. Societies progressed from hunter gathers to farmers and ranchers and developers of political organizations and higher technologies if the geography supported it. If the variety of animals which could be domesticated was sparce or the native flora was of limited nutritional value then the native population remained hunter gathers. Such less developed societies were easy prey for the higher developed societies. Not the least because the less developed societies were highly susceptible to a variety of infectious diseases to which the more highly developed society, living in a higher population density, had become relatively immune. The conquest of the Incas by Pizarro and his band of 198 Spaniards is a prime example cited by Diamond. The Incas did have a degree of agriculture and political organization but lacked many domestic animals and were very susceptible to Old World infectious diseases. The Incas also did not have a written language. Diamond provides numerous other examples of the European conquest of aboriginal peoples. Diamond's discussion on the origins and spread of agriculture are very enlightening. His discussion of the development and spread of written language is also interesting. Unfortunately Diamond gives little weight to religious, political, or philosophical differences between societies in determining their fates. This is a serious shortcoming of his work. Ultimately his thesis, while tantalizing, is not compelling.
Rating:
Summary: VERY ACCESIBLE TO THE LAYPERSON.
Review: I disagree with some of the reviewers who say that this book is not accesible to anyone not already familiar in this area. I have not read one history book besides this one since leaving highschool and can say that it was certainly interesting and has intrigued me enough that I will add history as a subject to my reading list. I find Mr. Diamond's style of writing very smooth, this book almost reads like a novel. As I have said, I know nothing of history and so cannot say whether his theories are correct, but they are certainly convincing. This book has made me realize that reading a history book doesn't have to be "homework" (AKA - torture).
Rating:
Summary: The Origins of Civilization
Review: Jared Diamond attempts to explain the entire development of humanity in the last 13,000 years in this volume, an overly ambitious project, no doubt. While the answer he provides contains a tremendous amount of truth and represents a major step forward in understanding human history, there are many variables that he leaves out. Diamond explains development in terms of biogeography, with cultivable grains, domesticable animals, and an East-West geographic axis. This combination leads to an agricultural surplus, larger populations, specialized occupations, and better technology. This powerful combination leads to farmer societies developing more quickly than hunter-gatherers. While his thesis is valuable and the new information he brings is astonishing, Diamond's theory is also deterministic and reductionist. There are too many other factors we also have to examine as well. One major factor is a culture's ability to harness its resources into a logical economic system. This has been discussed in detail by David Landes, whose work does not conflict with Diamond's but complements it. And ultimately, we cannot treat human beings as machines that are the same everywhere in the world, but that vary due to climate and geography, just like all other species. To explain human development, we also need to include humans in the discussion. This is a seemingly obvious point, but one that Diamond does not address since his goal is discount racism. But to say the races are different is not to say that one is better. If we refuse to look at race, we can't understand humanity.
To begin with, Diamond states technological change is due to the "inventor-genius," a lone individual whose innovation changes society. The larger the population, the more such individuals will be found. However, the populations in East Asia were always greater than in Europe. Despite that fact, most inventions came from Europe, particularly after 1500 AD. I suggest the answer may be that Europeans for some reason have a higher percentage of geniuses in their populations than Asians do, even though as a whole, Europeans might be slightly less intelligent than Asians. In general, Diamond cannot really explain why Europe developed before East Asia although his theory does explain why Eurasia developed before the rest of the world. At some point, however, we need to look at people if we are to understand history. At this point in our research on human biodiversity there are still many unanswered questions. But we should not shy away from asking more as Diamond does. For we may yet discover more reasons why Europeans developed before others. Ultimately, the major usefullness of this book is in explaining why civilizations developed where they did, first in Mesopotamia, and then east and west of that location. But it does not explain much after the origins of these civilizations: Why some areas developed quicker than others even after both had the requisite guns, germs, and steel remains unanswered by this theory. And it certainly can't explain the disparity in among modern societies.
Rating: 
Summary: biased
Review: Those of us not expert in history or the sciences are at the mercy of the writer of books of this sort. Much of it sounds very convincing, but when I read on page 19 that assumptions of racial superiority (when held by westerners) are loathsome and then the author goes on at some length to explain why he feels New Guineans are more intelligent than westerners, even providing a genetic explaination, I have to wonder if some politically-correct assumptions aren't at work. He winds up this section on page 22 with "Why did New Guineans wind up technologically primitive, despite what I believe to be their superior intelligence?"
Though there is undoubtably much truth in this book, the less-than-objective admission and puzzling double standard at the beginning don't lead me to fully trust the author.
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