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Ok I got a lot out of this book. Like Yali, the charismatic New Guinean local politician who quizzed the author 25 years before the book was written wanting to know why Europeans developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea which had little cargo of theirs, I bought this book in a bid to understand why Africa and its inhabitants developed at a much slower pace than other continents. Was it a matter of fate? Or was the politically incorrect charge that Africans are innately inferior to their fairer skinned counterparts somewhat justified ? Jared Diamond makes a strong case for Geography's deterministic role in the evolution of societies. In other words, the rich societies of today simply won the geographical draft lottery (in terms of who got the largest continental pie/size, who got the most ideal conditions for farming, who got the most number of wild mammals suitable for domestication, and who got the widest variety of wild plant species ideal for agriculture) played over 13,000 years ago when modern man began to settle into village life in a few parts of the world. That decisive edge, reinforced over the last 13,000 years is what led to the emergence of an indomitable Europe that eventually came to lead the world due to its development of guns, germs, and steel. According to the Author, Eurasia got decisively lucky in more ways than one: The Late Pleistocene extinction decimated Eurasia's competitors by felling wild mammal species of most of North and South America and those of Africa that may have facilitated intensive farming instead of the hunter-gathering lifestyle which eventually became a big impediment to the development of rapidly evolving complex societies on those continents. Those extinctions left Eurasia with many more wild candidates for domestication than the Americas and Africas offered. Agriculture and Continental Size were huge enablers. Eurasia is twice as large as the next largest continent, Africa, and had a wide extensive landmass of fertile soil amidst a variety of wild life that were easily domesticated for animal herding and valuable crops that facilitated the development of intensive farming techniques that helped serve denser populations and formed the basis for the formation of complex organized societies. Denser populations tend to rise only under conditions of food production, populations served by food surpluses from intensive farming techniques were more likely to have non-farming specialists, technocrats, warriors and bureaucrats. In contrast, poorer societies such as hunter-gatherers without such advantages remained as hunter-gatherers living in bands which were far from ideal to produce crop surpluses available for redistribution or storage, and hence could not support and feed non-hunting craft specialists, armies, bureaucrats, and chiefs to enable them evolve complex societies. In turn, agriculture spawned lethal germs emanating from Eurasian's long advantageous exposure to domestic Animals which was as decisive in eliminating local populations in conquest as guns and steamboats were. As illustrated by the New world's conquest of almost 95 percent of the 20million American Indians; exposing the Indians to strains of germs the Indians had never been exposed to, and against which they therefore had neither immunity nor genetic resistance to. The development of writing was another essential agent in assisting the conquests of Eurasian Societies: by fostering the development of maps that were beneficial to sailors exploring new lands to conquer, by providing a new way of communicating and (through preserved records) inspiring later generations to conquest, writing played a crucial role in the course of civilization but could not have been possible without food production. Writing emerged independently only in the Fertile Crescent, Mexico, and China because those were precisely the first areas were food production arose in their respective hemispheres. I already told you that what brought me to this book was to understand why as an African, we've evolved rather slowly compared to everyone else? I got my money's worth somewhere in pg 399 where the author states that "the factor behind Africa's slower rate of Post Pleistocene development compared with Eurasia's is the different orientation of the main axes of thee continents. Like that of the Americas, Africa's major axis is north-south, whereas Eurasia's is east-west. As one moves along a north south axis, one traverses zones differing greatly in climate, habitat, rainfall, day length, and diseases of crops and livestock. Hence, crops and animals domesticated in one part of Africa had great difficulty in moving to other parts. In contrast crops and animals moved easily between Eurasian societies thousands of mile apart but at the same latitude and sharing similar climate and day lengths". In a nutshell, geography, and not biology, ultimately did us in. I found this book a bit of a slog to get through due to the author's interdisciplinary approach ( history, archaeology, evolutionary biology, sociology, cultural anthropology etc) which mirrors his career trajectory so far. One of the few bones I have to pick with the book, as so many other reviewers have already mentioned, is its lack of sources. I also thought the author strove, quite frequently, a bit too hard for political correctness in for example, sounding a bit patronizing to the plight of poor societies like mine. I admit it may amount to career suicide for a tenured professor to have done otherwise; but to my mind any reader who can't handle a little intellectual honesty no matter how inconvenient isn't ready to address the fundamental questions about the human condition. For some reason, the kindle version I purchased didn't have images due to copyright issues. A bit of a setback because I didn't have any maps handy to make sense of the strange locations that pop up at various points in this read and no thanks, I like to read with an internet connection as far from me as possible. Then lastly, there was the glossy treatment of why different parts within Eurasia developed differently which he addresses scantly in a later edition of the book. But GGS ultimately proved to be a great read for me, and highly recommended for anyone who wants a keener appreciation of the world we live in today. But be forewarned, you may never see the world the same way again which surely is a good thing.

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Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2012

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Zachary Ruesch

Carnegie, US

★★★★★ 5

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

Format: Hardcover

Recently, I finished this great, broad, historical, and significant endeavor. Let me begin by expressing my appreciation of Jared Diamond’s wonderful ability to simplify a very complex topic and related ideas. This alone, makes this read a great one. Too, there a few gems of humor and wit within the pages which caught my eye and mind. Don’t get me wrong though. The pages are filled with complex data, examples, and comparisons. Upon more than one occasion, my understanding necessitated the rereading of paragraphs and pages. Before I proceed into deeper thoughts, I must admit the duration of this read as being conducted well over an extended timeframe. I began reading it years ago, stopped, and then started again. Over the course of the last several months, I recommitted and achieved. In thoughtful detail, Diamond seeks to explain why certain groups of people have been successful over the course of human events and history, while others, in comparison, are not. It should be noted, the idea of “success” is very subjective. So, success in this case, is related to Western ideas of technological development, exploration, and conquest - generally described as one group of people gaining control or influence over another. An effective description of this is the Spanish conquest and colonization of the “New World,” especially the Aztecs and Incas. This example, though quite large in scope, and as pointed out by Diamond, has occurred throughout human history in large and small ways involving a multitude of others groups of people, both known and unknown. In short, I believe Diamond does well in addressing the impact and luck of geography and resources, as well as, the influences of more innate human characteristics and variety. The debate of nature versus nurture is here too contained. In the past, and not only in recent history, humans have expressed understandings of success in terms of innate differences which must exist between people - obviously though, those in power and dominate are able to define and express such ideas. However, Diamond looks beyond this and recognizes the complexity, and ultimately more profound influence of reality, nurture. In this sense though, it is not simply human nurturing and choice, it is the opportunities presented to humans, in difference places, at different times, to take advantage of their earthly surroundings and the ability to nurture developments, or not. This read is filled with a plethora of well detailed examples which come to show how access, or not, to certain elements leads to the success and superiority which has been described and known by those in power, throughout history. So, today, when certain people look down upon others and their lack of some qualities or characteristics, Diamond’s historical analysis provides engaging insight beyond and through the bias. Who we are presently is the result of all the past experiences of the human ancestors who preceded us, and furthermore, our development and success, in comparison to other humans, is simply more so the result of the access we have had to a confluence of resources and circumstances which allowed us to dominate other groups of humans with less access to the same. As groups of humans defined through sociological processes, we are no more intelligent, healthy, or physiologically better than the whole of humanity understood to exist through anthropology, biology, and any other area of study. “We all know that history has proceeded very differently for peoples from different parts of the globe...Those historical inequalities have cast long shadows on the modern world, because the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies. While those differences constitute the most basic fact of world history, the reasons for them remain uncertain and controversial.” In this work, Diamond splendidly explains how, “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” Please give the ideas of these pages the opportunity to share with you a detailed perspective of human experience which reaches far into the depths of history, beyond even the earliest written language. Diamond’s words will likely cause you to become lost in thoughts of the past. However, at the same time, he’ll take you to definitive places of demonstrable purpose leading to a better future understood through the context(s) of human experience.

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Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2016

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D. Cloyce Smith

Carnegie, US

★★★★★ 5

Brilliant, eclectic panorama of the past 13,000 years

This intriguing and expansive book gathers knowledge from a number of fields (archaeology, anthropology, ecology, evolutionary biology, horticulture, and more). Its novelty is not in the details, any of which can be found in other books, but in the synthesis of 13,000 years' worth of human history. Diamond argues that many (but not all) of "the striking differences between the long-term histories of peoples of the different continents have been due not to innate differences in the people themselves but to differences in their environments." Diamond covers so much material that any attempt at summary would be imprecise. The sections I found most compelling dealt with agriculture and animal husbandry--two topics that would have probably induced sleep if covered by another author. For example, he presents the fascinating background that the dominant five "large" domesticated mammals--sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and horses--originated in central Eurasia (and that no easily domesticated, large mammals were available, for example, to North Americans or Australians); that these animals include the world's only widespread "beasts of burden," giving their human handlers additional advantages in mobility and farming; and that most of the world's lethal diseases resulted from proximity to the barnyard, gradually providing Eurasians with immunity to illnesses that later wiped out entire societies upon first exposure. The minor mammals (camels, llamas, reindeer) were too limited by geography and climate to affect the course of history outside their confines. As for zebras, bears, giraffes, tigers, hippos--to this day, nobody has been able to domesticate them. While this seems intuitively obvious, no writer has so clearly and irrefutably connected the dots, showing how access to these animals gave early chiefdoms an insurmountable advantage over those human societies without them and allowed them to develop surpluses and commerce that supported the world's most enduring civilizations. Comments made by the author's critics, while few in number, nearly prevented me from reading this book and need to be addressed so other readers won't be similarly discouraged. A few readers seem offended by Diamond's self-mocking and somewhat tongue-in-cheek assertion (in the Introduction) that the natives of New Guinea have certain advantages that make them arguably more "intelligent." Yet these commentators are willfully ignoring the context: Diamond admits that "New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood," yet he is quite aware of how "stupid I look to New Guineans when I'm with them in the jungle." That is, if one defines "intelligence" not as the knowledge needed to use a computer or write a book review but, rather, as the ability to survive in the wild ("following a jungle trail" or identifying poisonous mushrooms, to cite two of the author's examples), then the New Guineans win hands down. To make a similarly lighthearted argument: when the house of cards we call "civilization" is threatened by the least misfortune (economic recession, power blackout, bad weather, the death of a British princess), a frightening number of otherwise "intelligent" people, instead of relying on their wits and survival skills, rush straight for their therapists. Likewise, anyone who accuses Diamond of "geographic determinism" cannot have read the epilogue, in which he clearly rejects such an extreme position. He admits that individuals and cultures--and, for that matter, pure chance--can also influence history, but "that some environments provide more starting materials, and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions, then do other environments." The author's argument is unambiguous: while culture, as well as individual inventors and rulers, certainly influence history on a microcosmic level (during spans of centuries or millennia), there are larger factors, such as geography and ecology, at play when human history is considered as a whole over the last 13,000 years. Diamond is looking at the forest rather than the trees; thus, to fault the author for ignoring such factors as religion and politics is off the mark, since such belief systems didn't exist in anything remotely resembling their present form for most of the period under discussion. Furthermore, to identify human advances in terms of culture still fails to explain how differing cultures arose in the first place. Finally, and more easily dismissed, are those hecklers who howl "political correctness." Such critics seldom identify flaws in the author's arguments or even tell us what they insinuate by this increasingly meaningless term. Since the book's span is so sweeping and since many of Diamond's hypotheses are offered tentatively (as suggestions for a new "science" of history), there are bound to be statements or implications that may eventually prove inaccurate or too simplistic. I strongly suspect, however, that his overarching thesis will withstand the test of time; at the very least, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" will inspire open-minded thinkers to consider human history--in its broadest sense--in a whole new light.

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Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2003

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Henry Perkins

Waukegan, US

★★★★★ 4

Great scope and central thesis, but tries too hard

[Strong 3.5 stars for its scope and development of the central thesis, but loses points for trying too hard to explain away non-European cultural failures.] The first line of Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning opus is: "This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years." His central thesis is that luck of genetic distribution of domesticable plants and animals, particularly cereals and large mammals, gave a tremendous leg up to western Eurasia in the development of civilization. In other words, it wasn't poor choices or innate inferiority that caused most of the world to be dominated by European culture -- just luck. In a book with greatly wider scope than most nonfiction Pulitzer winners, Diamond pulls together long-term threads of farming, herding, languages, disease, technology, government, and religion. He attempts to explain how trends in all these disparate areas rather inexorably led to the cultural and economic state of the world today. While many of the author's arguments are subject to debate, the writing is lucid; it's easy to see why the Pulitzer committee gave Diamon the prize. To take to task all the debatable points in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" would be a huge undertaking. I'll try to highlight a few. Diamond argues that the temperate Mediterranean climate (featuring wet winters and dry summers) of southwest Asia aided greatly in early development, then has to explain why similar climates in California, Chile, and southwest Australia didn't spur development in those places. Human actions (particularly deforestation and overgrazing) have turned what used to be called the "Fertile Crescent" into a wasteland, whereas this didn't happen in the similar southern European area. Thus southwestern Asia possessed the seeds of human development, but the locals squandered their head start. At that point Europe and eastern Asia had an equal chance of pulling ahead, and Diamond proposes that the geographical fragmentation of Europe gave it a competitive advantage over China's cohesiveness. But because he earlier claims that easy movement (for the spread of domesticable species) gave Europe a competitive advantage over America and Africa, this argument is not compelling. Diamond thinks that the different parts of the world were on a developmental par about 13,000 years ago. At that time there were many more potentially domesticable large mammals in the Americas than there are now. The evidence as to what the human presence at that time is mixed, but Diamond pushes hard to dispute evidence of any prior human occupation. He favors the "Clovis first" theory, which has humans first entering from Siberia across the ice age Bering land bridge not more than 13,000 years ago, carrying stone "Clovis point" weapons. Clovis points have been found in large numbers in mammoth carcasses in North America, and Diamond thinks they were developed in Asia and transported across Beringia. Mammoths are one of the many now-extinct large mammals. From the mammoth kill evidence, Diamond assumes hunting by immigrants from Siberia caused the extinction of not just mammoths but horses, elephants, lions, and all the other megafauna. But there are several problems with this argument. Firstly, there are more recent findings than those Diamond disputes to back up the earlier human occupation theory. Secondly, there are no Clovis points north of British Columbia, which would mean these genocidal immigrants fasted all through Alaska. And thirdly, while there are thousands of Clovis points in mammoth skeletons, to date we've found just ONE clovis point in an American horse carcass, and NONE in elephants, lions, or giraffes -- all at one time widely found in North America. All of this debate for later occupation of the Americas appears designed to buttress a secondary argument that American development got started too late to catch up with the Eurasians. But ironically, the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis, linked to a single overwhelming swarm of human invaders, argues against Jared Diamond's central thesis. If he's right, it WAS the Native Americans' own fault that they were later overrun by Europeans on horses, becaused they killed and ate all the existing horses on arrival. Diamond also has to resort to some hand-waving to explain why independent Mesoamerican invention of writing and wheels (used only in toys, rather than tools like wheelbarrows) never went anywhere. Similar weak arguments are used to explain why China went into cultural stagnation centuries ago. Ultimately, the author tries too hard to make all of history fit his model. In trying to explain why superior technology isn't necessarily accepted, Diamond trots out the old myth about the Dvorak keyboard being superior to the standard QWERTY layout, yet never finding much demand. However, Diamond's book came out in 1997, and the Dvorak myth had been debunked 7 years previously (Journal of Law & Economics vol. XXXIII (April 1990)). Diamond is left with no argument other than cultural superiority to explain why societies that adopt better technology succeed, and he rejects that position a priori. In his professional career the author has spent much time working in New Guinea. He thinks constant local warfare has made the average surviving New Guinea tribesman superior to the average descendant of European culture, and wants to explain why the people of New Guinea have so little "cargo" (wealth). But Diamond's focus on New Guinea as a model for global development is more elucidating to the author than to his readers. There are some problems with the book layout itself, including a surprisingly poor index. For instance, trying to look up horse extinctions in the Americas, I found references to horses under "Americas, animal extinctions in" that didn't appear under "horses, in Americas". Also, there are a variety of different maps with different levels of detail to show the migrations of peoples, languages, and domestic species. It's necessary to flip back and forth between the maps to follow the narrative thread. This is a good book to read, but a skeptical perspective is necessary while doing so.

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Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2003

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Tom Riddle

Lake Worth, US

★★★★★ 3

Guns Germs & Steel Book Review

Format: Hardcover

Guns, Germs, And Steel is an influential treatise of competitive plausibility regarding the challenging question why population groups on different continents experienced widely divergent paths of development. Contrary to the voluminous objections cited in the many of the revisionist historians and anthropologists, the famous biologist Jared Diamond tackles the most important question of global history in one compelling volume: "Why did Europeans come to dominate the New World?" This question has been answered by others before and Diamond's idea that Europe's geography is the cause geographical determinism has also been proposed before. Any student of history or anthropology can drag up a case or two of this thesis. Baron Montaigne, for example, suggested that Europe's predominance curtailed from its superior government, which could be derived directly from the coolness of its climate. However as an enthusiastic proponent of environmental determinism, Jared Diamond presents a set of premises consistent with evidence provided from a wide range of disciplines, but he does not attempt to answer the question of genetic diversity, including segregated intelligence among racial groups as many reviewers have inferred. If anything, implicitly, the author appears to support promulgations of differentiated intelligences; he sets out to demonstrate intelligence was not the root cause to Eurasian dominance. The deep significance of this book is that Diamond's thesis is not simply idle conjecture. He proves that the Eurasian land mass had by far the best biological resources with which to develop agricultural societies, and was thus more able to form large, coherent, and powerful social entities. In order to back this idea, Diamond introduces a set of well-researched data on what kinds of plants and animals are necessary to support a farming society. He investigates the biological resources available to potential farmers in all parts of the world. The people of Eurasia had access to a suite of plants and animals that provided for their needs. Potential farmers in other parts of the world did not have such access and so, their fertile soil went uncultivated. Beginning 13,000 years ago, the author illuminated the circumstances that may have smoothed growth for some groups and repressed the same for others. Diamond accepts the out of Africa theory for the dispersion of Homo sapiens to the other continents as well as the importance of location that they went. For Diamond, food production is the definitive cause of capricious rates of development for different peoples. He demonstrates how the abundance of wild plants subject to domestication and availability of large mammals served as immediate factors to transition from hunter/gatherer bands and tribes to sedentary agriculturally based chiefdoms and states. In this context, Eurasia was home to important number of crops and animals that readily and successfully domesticated. This domestication resulted in mass food production, which the author claims is the "ultimate" cause of Western dominance. Food production in turn, led to a number of adjoining causes related to the rise of the West:- farms and animal herds led to stationary populations and excess food to support a specialized class of bureaucrats and soldiers and it also increased population density. After establishing this strong foundation, Diamond falls into reiterating ideas about the creation of large-scale societies. These ideas, while clichéd, are still enthralling and Diamond presents them in a very clear and well-written way. His other major original contribution comes when he discusses the diseases that helped the Old World conquer the New World. Building on his earlier chapters dealing with Old-World domesticated animals, he shows that these very animals were the sources of the major plagues such as smallpox which virtually annihilated New World populations. The fact that Old World people had immunities to these diseases was a direct result of their agricultural head-start. Finally, Diamond concludes, the unique East-West axis of Eurasia and the absence of any impenetrable geographic barriers fostered the spread of new crops, technologies which gave rise to many competing communities, whose competition further increased the western lead over the rest of the world. These technical details, while complete, are presented in a very easy to fathomable way and Diamond's writing style is fun and engaging. Diamond's arguments are persuasive on the surface, and even the prevalent skeptic will have reason for pause after reading his book. However, I have some concerns with respect to the credibility of this book. I felt that I had to second guess most of his evidence, because it was equivocal, lacking or incorrect. Firstly, Diamond uses the term "Eurasian" to describe cultures and societies. However, the term is essentially used to describe a geographical landmass or tectonic plates. All the way through the book, he uses the term "Eurasian" when it supports his hypothesis and replaces the term with European or western Eurasian to support another part of his thesis. He does not separate Europe and Asia to explain societies and cultures even though Europe and Asia contain different religions, cultures and languages. But then again, he separates "North Africa" from "Sub-Saharan Africa" even though they are part of the same continental landmass and have more commonalties. On page 161, Diamond attempts to explain his reasoning behind using the broad and vague term "Eurasian" when he states that: "my use of the term "Eurasia" includes in several cases North Africa, which biogeographically and in many aspects of human culture is more closely related to Eurasia than to sub-Saharan Africa". I believe Diamond confuses contemporary North African culture with the cultures that inhabited Northern Africa from 10,000 BC to 8th century AD. For example, from pre-dynastic to the mid-late stages of the Ancient Egyptian civilization, the ancient Egyptians had contact and traded with cultures in Ethiopia (sub-Saharan Africa). The Ancient Egyptian and Amharic language (Ethiopia) belong to the same language group which is Afro-Asiatic, and also belong to the same sub language group, which is Semitic. Diamond makes vague generalities in supporting his thesis and fails to engage significant evidence that challenges his thesis. In addition, when studying the development of different cultures and the spread of food production and technology, he modifies the definition of different terms to fit his hypothesis. Any hypothesis can be supported if you continuously alter the variables you are challenging. I found this to be the most distracting facet of this book. He does this with the terms "North African" and "Sub-Saharan African" which are terms that carried little meaning between 13,000 BC until the 7th century, but are used to separate the significant accomplishments of Ancient Egyptians (Africans) with other Africans. On page 92, he states that: "the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia and later, or not at all, on other continents." That statement is false, since written records of the Ancient Egyptian (African) language have been dated from about 3200 BC, making it the oldest and longest documented language. The Sumerian language, as Diamond claims is the oldest language, developed around 3000 BC. Additionally, a recent archaeological discovery has suggested that some Gerzean pottery with early hieroglyphics located in Egypt could have originated since 4000 BC. Ancient Egyptians were also the first to develop mathematic concepts such as the Decimal system and science such as astronomy and medicine during that time period and significantly influenced Greek science and mathematics. Diamond does not mention any of this and I believe that he leaves out noteworthy attainments by non-Europeans to support his thesis. Throughout the book, Diamond also poses the following question in the background: "Why were Eurasians, rather than Native Americans or sub-Saharan Africans, the ones to invent firearms, oceangoing ships, and steel equipment?" Nevertheless, Diamond does not engage in the most basic question relating to the motivations of these cultures: Did Native Americans or Sub-Saharan Africans have a need for firearms/oceangoing ships? More to the point, did the Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and other so-called non-Eurasians, want firearms or oceangoing ships? The answer would have forced Diamond to research the cultures and religions of Native Americans and Sub-Saharan Africans in more detail, rather than explaining it with geography and/or food production. Also, he does not include the significant accomplishments of Ancient Egypt, including papyrus, an early form of paper that originated in Africa not Europe or Asia. On page 190, Diamond states that: "Continental differences in axis orientation affected the diffusion not only of food production but also of other technologies and inventions." It is known that Ancient Egyptian technology including scientific or medical discoveries traveled along the north or south axis towards the Middle-east and eventually to ancient Greece. Diamond doesn't mention any of this, which further questions the credibility of the book. Another problem with Diamond's style is that he seems to negate the influences of Non-Europeans, specifically Africa and China, to the current Western hegemony such as gunpowder from China, natural resources from Africa by either not mentioning them at all or under-emphasizing their importance. It is quite likely that without the influences from non-European civilizations that current Western hegemony would not exist today. He also makes downright false statements such as in page 247 when he states that: "Delivered in grenades, rockets, and torpedoes, those incendiaries played a key role in Islam's eventual defeat of the Crusaders." According to historical records, there is no evidence to suggest that grenades, rockets and torpedoes were used during the Crusades. I agree that the domestication of plants and animals could predispose agriculturalists to further development. However, geography and domestication of animals and plants alone is inadequate to support his thesis without explaining the role of the people and societies occupying the geography. Geography might be a factor to explain how Western Civilization became the dominant civilization in the world today. Though, European civilization did not arise in a vacuum. Regardless of the plausible geographic advantage of Europe and Asia, factors such as political intentions, morals, ethics, religion and culture all served to explain why some civilizations were determined to expand and build empires through conquest, while others did not. Diamond claims that his theories offer an alternative explanation to traditional racist dogma. Conversely, I believe his theories do just the opposite. By stating that Europeans developed into the dominant civilization by "chance" or "luck" with respect to geography strengthens racist theories that European civilization was "destined" to become the most powerful. Moreover, Diamond dismisses politics, religion, culture, individuals, and timing. For example, consider Cortez's victory over the Aztecs. Cortez's victory was not assured. Many elements had to be aligned for a few hundred Spaniards to overcome a mighty empire. The odds were really in Montezuma's favor. Even with horses, armor, and guns, the Aztecs were easily a match for Cortez. The Spanish armor was superfluous. According to Keegan, they even shed their heavy armor in favor of the native quilt vests. The firearms at that time were not quick to reload, so sheer numbers could have overwhelmed the Spanish. The Aztecs lost because of politics, religion, and individuals. The brutal politics and religion of the Aztecs made their subjects hate them. The Spanish were immediately supported with armies and food by the smaller nations like the Totonacs that hated the Aztecs for their cruelty. The insatiable appetite of the Aztec gods for human sacrifices insured that Cortez found ready allies. If either Montezuma or Cortez had been composed of slightly different temperaments the war could easily have gone the other way. Had Montezuma been more decisive, he could have had Cortez killed at the coast. Had Cortez not been so incredibly determined to take the country, he could have just returned to Spain with a load of the early gold presents sent to him. History is determined by far more than geography, plants, and animals. Culture, religion, individuals, politics, and timing all play important roles. My criticisms have nothing to do with "political correctness", but rather I take issue with Diamond's style of revisionist history that does not emphasize the influence and significance of non-European civilizations towards current Western civilization. While reading the book, I was frequently second guessing the facts of Jared Diamond because they were either inexact or vague. In closing, as an introduction to anthropology and a cogent depiction of one school of thought on the rise of the West this book is marvelous. However, it needs to be approached with an open-mind as it has some of its faults. Reflect on the thesis and the supporting evidence, and then draw your own conclusions. Love it or hate it, you owe it to yourself to read this book. As for me, this book is one of the best revisionist histories on the Ancient Civilizations but as the case with revisionist history, it has its share of one sided and extreme arguments. It is a good book but not great. Still, it is very simple to read and very easy to cognize which I think deserves the Pulitzer Prize it won.

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Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2011