Armi, acciaio e malattie. Breve storia del mondo negli ultimi tredicimila anni

This is what happens when you take an intelligent person, and casually make a few mentions of a field of study they have no knowledge of. Mr. Diamond, NOT an anthropologist, takes Marvin Harris' theory of cultural materialism and uses it to explain everything in life, history, and the current state o Leggi tutto

[Original review, Dec 10 2008] I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn't known before I read it. Jared Diamond has clearly had a more interesting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world. He sa Leggi tutto

“Why you white men have so much cargo [i.e., steel tools and other products of civilization] and we New Guineans have so little?” Jared Diamond is a biologist, who had a passion for studying birds, particularly the birds of New Guinea. But as he came to know and appreciate the many native people Leggi tutto

Author Jared Diamond's two-part thesis is: 1) the most important theme in human history is that of civilizations beating the crap out of each other, 2) the reason the beat-ors were Europeans and the beat-ees the Aboriginees, Mayans, et. al. is because of the geographical features of where each civil Leggi tutto

Did you ever wonder if there is a certain inevitability in the way world civilization and history has evolved? Jared Diamond’s work Guns, Germs and Steel argues, in effect, that the giant Eurasian continent (Europe and Asia combined) was predestined to take over the world. Everything conspired in fa Leggi tutto

It took me a while to complete Diamond's book (and admittedly I also distracted myself with a few Roth novels in the meantime) because of the density of the text and the variety of ideas presented. The central thesis that it is not racial biology that determines the victors in history but rather a c Leggi tutto

This may be the most over-rated book in the history of book rating. The point he is making is that we in Western Civilazation haven't built skyscrapers, made moon landings, mass produced automobiles, eradicated polio (or for that matter lived indoors with running water) while aborigines in certain r Leggi tutto

This book explains why some countries became more powerful than others. The author says that it had to do with things like geography and the environment. Some places had more animals and plants to help people to survive and made them stronger. Other places did not have as much so they struggled more. Th Leggi tutto