Rating: 
Summary: This book.... horrible! ><*
Review: Jeez, can you say RAMBLING?!To me the whole book is just a bunch of convoluted and verbosely-written essays on the evolution of mankind and its "I wanna rule the world" attitude. So there were some "thought-provoking things", but I couldn't get past the prologue without wishing I was reading a world history text book instead. Too bad I have to finish GGS if I want to pass the class I'm taking. I see a lot of bias and meaningless dribble in this book. Unless your life depends on it, don't bother reading this thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting
Review: I really liked the way this book was set up. It was clearly structured and Diamond carefully addresses each of the questions that are brought up. Diamond draws information several different fields of studies and inventively combines the information in order to address the issue of why some societies quickly developed 'civilization' while others developed more slowly or not at all. This book is easily accessible to people of all levels of education and the arguments Diamond makes seem very practical and down to earth. I greatly enjoyed this book. It was entertaining and interesting, and I think it is a must read for anyone interested in the development of societies.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book and very interesting theory
Review: Loved this book. Very interesting and beleivable theory. Everything is explained in layman's terms, though not dumbed down by any means. The book does get a bit repetitive towards the end, but overall a great read.
Rating:
Summary: A Thought Provoking Idea
Review: This book tries to explain why the world has come to be dominated by western cultures coming out of Europe. Thankfullly, the reason is not due to racial or genetic sueriority, as some experts have claimed in the past. In fact, according to Diamond, the reason beginins in the prehistory of humans. The most important factors are the physical environment and the availability of easily domesticated plants and animals. Also, Eurasian cultures benefited from an East-West axis, which promoted the spread of agriculture and crops, while other continents suffered from a North-South axis which retarded the spread of crops. Those cultures which had access to these crops and a good environment to grow them in could increase their food production and population which in turn led to the development of government, writing, and technology. Jared Diamond's background as an evolutionary biologist helps him to see the big picture. He's able to back away from the small details of history which often mislead other researchers. I'm particularly interested in his idea that opportunity, not race or culture, was the prime derterminant in the rise of western culture. My only complaint is that at times it seems that Diamond is repeating himself. Perhaps if the editing had been a little tighter, he could have cut this book by about 25 to 30 pages. Anyway, it's just a small complaint. Overall this is an excellent book with some great ideas.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Argued, But Ethnocentrism and Credibility Issues Hurt
Review: The author did a good job of making points about where the effective changes came from that determined which societies conquered which and why different societies became as dominant as they did in the modern world. However, I found it a bit irritating to listen to the paragraphs on end where the author attempted to convince us that native New Guineans are more intelligent and adaptable than Europeans. For the majority of the book he uses New Guineans in his examples, and he, strangely, refers to New Guinea as a mini-continent on a frequent basis, which is strange to me, since it is quite small, and, in both economic and political terms, unimportant on a world-wide basis. His infatuation with the culture and the island, I think, hurts the book. In other places, he makes references to certain facts, I don't recall what they are off-hand, that are not true, most especially having to do with disease etiology and origins. Actually, I do remember one, where he cites influenza as having origins in swine, where it really comes from fowl, and it is amplified and altered by genetic recombination in swine. This also undermines his credibility, and these factors hurt the ability of the author to make persuasive arguments, making it difficult to accept them. I would recommend reading it to people, but only with caution. Like everything else, think about it when you read it, but take more caution than normal, as the author is very intelligent and quite persuasive, but potentially fundamentally flawed.
Harkius
Rating:
Summary: Fun book but author has axe to grind and misses big point
Review: The author is preoccupied by political correctness and cultural relativism and his politics intrude -- and ultimately undermine -- on what is otherwise an really interesting and insightful work. But if you read the book or even a few reviews, you already know that. So here's my contribution: what his book is really about is chaos/complexity theory although I don't think the author appreciates that. Complex systems are extraordinarily sensitive to initial conditions and the development of modern civiliation is a complex system. A few extra grain species in Iraq and presto, 5000 years later you end up with New York and London. The irony is that there's nothing deterministic about a complex system. It's totally unpredictable. The idea of determinism that prevades the book is an illusion of history viewed through hindsight.
Rating: 
Summary: Long, dry, and disappointing
Review: It is very frustrating to give this book 2 stars because it deserves more. The concept and scope of the book is fascinating, however, the execution leave much to be desired. In talking with several people about this book we all came to the same conclusion, the book is too long. Diamond repeatedly brings up interesting points and then repeatedly beats them into the ground. A neat idea that can be covered in 3 pages, instead takes 15. After the first 100 pages yout get what he is talking about, but there is still another 300 pages to go. Unfortunately I can't recommend this book to anyone, because it is too painful to read.
Rating:
Summary: An overrated book
Review: Jared Diamond is a thoroughgoing geographical determinist. His book highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of this approach. Diamond's major topic is the Neolithic Revolution. His intention is to demonstrate that environmental conditions were not equally suitable to the development of agriculture on different continents. Eurasia, he contends, was the most appropriate place. It had the largest number of domesticable plants and animals, an east-west axis favoring the diffusion of inventions, offered good possibilities for inter-continental communication, and was the largest and most populous continent. So the Eurasians were first in developing agriculture, gaining thus a headstart in history. Agriculture led to rising polulations and created a dynamic that prompted the evolution of states, writing and a sophisticated technology (guns and steel). These social and technological advantages, plus immunity to the most dangerous infectious diseases (germs), allowed Eurasians to easily subdue the natives of the Americas, Australia and Southeast Asia. On the whole this argument, which takes up the first 410 pages of the book, is convincing. Diamond is also right to insist on adopting a long time-frame. As early as 8000 years ago Eurasians had a substantial edge over their rivals on other continents, making it unlikely for those peoples and civilizations to catch up. Had Diamond stopped writing at this point, he would have published a good work. However, he was not content to treat only the Neolithic Revolution, but wanted to cover all major turns in world history. Hence the last 15 (!) pages of the book are devoted to a completely different subject. Having explained the rise of Eurasia, Diamond now wants to explain the rise of the West. Quickly the question becomes: Why Europe, not China? Borrowing an idea from Eric Jones ('The European Miracle'; but beware: Jones' approach is much more sophisticated than Diamond's, avoiding any kind of monocausal determinism) Diamond provides a simple answer: Europe was geographically more diverse than China. Therefore it did not become politically unified. Political fragmentation led to openness and openness to progress - ideas and inventions that were rejected at one place could succeed at another. This speculation is not plausible at all. First, there is no geographical NECESSITY for European fragmentation and Chinese unity. Europe has many features favoring political unity. Its long coastline and a great number of navigable rivers allow for easy transportation by water, offering an important asset to any would-be imperial power. The Romans took advantage of this to the utmost, and if they were able to conquer a great part of the continent, there can surely have been no compelling GEOGRAPHICAL reason for later powers to fail. Diamond himself seems to realize this, when he admits that India had even more agricultural core areas than Europe. Yet India was ruled as a unified empire for most of its history. Second, Diamond's explanation - even if assumed to be correct - accounts only for INNOVATION. It tells us why certain inventions made by Chinese craftsmen were never introduced into the production-process of China's economy. A more important question to ask would have been why many significant inventions were not made in China in the first place. A prime example coming to mind is modern natural science, which was never developed in the Middle Kingdom. Third, it is easy to see that Diamond's argument is undermined by his own evidence. As he tells us, China was scientifically and technologically ahead of Europe (and the rest of the world) for more than 1000 years. If China could achieve this superiority despite its supposed geographical disadvantages, we cannot escape the conclusion that those disadvantages either did not exist or were of minor importance. Europe, on the other hand, remained a cultural backwater for most of its history despite its supposed geographical advantages. Again, we cannot but conclude that these advantages either did not exist or were of minor importance. Thus Diamond's environmentalism is completely refuted by Chinese and European history before 1500 a.d. Moreover, no other version of geographical determinism is likely to fare better. Since China's geography did not change within the last 2000 years, every purely geographical interpretation of its history must be wrong. It will either fail to account for the period of Chinese superiority or for the period of Chinese backwardness. Diamond's errors are grounded in his method. Geographical determinism can explain the Neolitic Revolution, because this transformation was brought about by small bands of hunter-gatherers extremely dependant on their environment. Even so, Diamond needs FOUR causal factors to account for its different outcome on each continent (1. The wild plant and animal species available; 2. Orientation of the major continental axis; 3. Possibilities for inter-continental communication, 4. Size of area and population of a given continent). When we look at the great Eurasian civilizations, we have to deal with a type of society vastly more complex and far less dependant on its environment than are bands of hunter-gatherers. Yet Diamond wants to explain the history of these civilizations with reference to just ONE causal factor (the impact of geography on political unity). Instead of becoming more sophisticated in accordance with its subject, Diamond's approach turns brutally simplistic just as it is applied to the most difficult problem of world history. It is unlikely that the rise of the West can ever be explained geographically. Any serious attempt to write global history for periods after the Neolithic Revolution will have to be sensitive to the complex interplay between geography, economy, technology, politics and culture that shapes the development of large societies. The work of Max Weber and Fernand Braudel provides good examples of the kind of scholarship needed for this task. Jared Diamond's book not only fails to rise up to this standard, but is crude, superficial and disappointing even from a geographical point of view. Clearly Diamond did not know when to put his pen down. His book would have been better if he had refrained from addressing topics unsuited to his method.
Rating:
Summary: Factual reading but not my type of book
Review: have read "Guns, Germs and Steel" because my sister indicated it to me as a good reading. It really is a good reading, specially given the astounding set of facts that the author lists for the benefit of his theory, which basically tries to address the following question: why did the europeans conquer the world and not the other way around? Not being an apologetic text, quite to the contrary, the author wants to demonstrate that what is behind the dominion of West over East is assigned to factors well beyond the control of any given human race, but mainly attributable to the play of factors not the least imputed to any race supremacy. Notwhidstanding all this, he ascertains that the earlier the domestication of animals and some varieties of staples and cereals, the more prone are human beings to be innoculated against the vagraries of some virus or disease.
Rating:
Summary: Apologist
Review: You will read that all cultures are equivalent, except for one, which is loathsome, Western culture. You will then read that intelligence cannot possibly be higher among some ethnic groups than others, except for one which actually is smarter, New Guinea cannibals.
You will then learn that conceptions such as humanism, the renaissance and that most hated of words nowadays, morality, had nothing to do with Western domination at all, but that it was just "geography".
You will weep by the end of this work, for the wicked conceit of a savage's apologist.
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