Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Guns, Germs, and Steel

> by mainstream historians and anthropologists Indeed it is but mainstream historians and anthropologists are not the arbiters of good science. The criticisms, that I'm aware of, come down to incomplete research on Yali (not a critical aspect of the narrative and absent from The Third Chimpanzee) and an over-enthusiastic pre-emptive argument against a neo-darwinian interpretation of genetic data. I agree with carterklein13, Guns, Germs, and Steel is near the top of my list of influential books.

I read Sapiens after seeing the same edge.org conversation, and while it was mostly good, I think it started off strong and then became less so as it went on. Especially towards the end it became almost a hot list of current events the author had read about in the newspaper, like browsing through a lot of TED talks, without a lot of coherence to a larger picture. My other complaint would be that some portions seemed less scholarly and heavily influenced by the author's opinions and personal worldview. Not a bad book by any means but somewhat less than the "history of humankind" I had hoped for. The first quarter focusing on prehistory through agriculture was very informative, though leaves me questioning if I'm just suffering from Gell-Mann amnesia. Rated it 4/5 on Goodreads when I was finished. I found Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond to be perhaps a better book of similar nature overall, and would add in The 10,000 Year Explosion by Cochran and Harpending as another good one for those who liked Sapiens.

The first link in that reddit comment points to [1] which is a critique of another Diamond's book. But if you let me give two comments on it: (1) In the first sentences, the author (a PhD student in history) cannot really hide his irritation that someone with a background in animal physiology has written a popular book about history. I have seen this ad hominem several times about Jared Diamond. Somehow those historians cannot stand that someone with no degree in history has written such a popular book. (2) "Guns, Germs, and Steel attacked the notion that racial superiority explained Western global pre-eminence, a view taken seriously by almost no one who’s taken seriously" Actually, what Guns, Germs, and Steel did, was to provide a first comprehensive theory (that I have heard of, anyway) that explains why Europe, and not someone else, rose to dominance. This is the merit. The main merit is not that it, as a side product, discredited the racially based theories. Failing to understand this difference does not speak highly of the writer of the review. [1] http://www.columbia.edu/~saw2156/HunterBlatherer.pdf

Even Eduardo Galeano himself dismisses that book as shortsighted. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/books/eduardo-galeano-disa... (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/books/eduardo-galeano-disavows-his-book-the-open-veins.html?_r=0) If you want a good view of the matter, please read Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Should be read by all who wonder how our minds work - and how much happens "behind the scenes", "under the covers". Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett. Should be read by all curious to know the full implications of mechanistic evolution (hint: think about what came before life). The Mating Mind, by Geoffrey Miller. Must-read for anyone in marketing, or anyone wondering why the other guy got laid and you didn't. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. Why are we rich and they poor? Why so few domesticated African animals? Why one big China and a many-state Europe? The Laughter of Triumph: William Hone and the Fight for the Free Press, by Ben Wilson. Great read about an early 19th C. struggle against unjust laws used to gag journalism. Relevant in today's age of bloggers, etc.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid; Douglas Hofstadter. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies; Jared Diamond.

Guns Germs and Steel is possibly one of the most fascinating books I've read in years. No wonder it won a Pulitzer. Also I have to add a Carl Sagan book. "Varieties of Scientific Experience" is fantastic. "pale blue dot", as well.