"Guns, Germs, and Steel"
I heard about the book and thought the idea was fascinating. I tried reading it and quickly got bored. It was very dense and text book like. Not everyone is interested in reading a thick text book for a basically simple idea and I think the book would have been better there was a more straight forward version available as well.
Eventually I found out that the National Geographic did a Documentary based on the book. I had very low expectations, because I've never been much of a fan of the National Geographic Corporation. I must say the Video was put together well and had some good animations and great re-enactments of history, but the factual content was not very amazing.
I had been thinking about the title and theme of the book for years and when I eventually saw the movie I didn't feel like I had learned much.
I'll have to check my notes on it again, but I remember that the movie bothered me. It seemed that the author ignored the obvious ingenuity of specific cultures and civilizations and tried to attribute everything to chance as it related to geography. He ignored any influence of Religion on the possible advancement on certain societies.
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- -9 points
by Jared Diamond. I think it is a wonderful book. I'm taking my time with, as there is a lot to take in. But it serves as excellent fuel for my activist spirit.
From Amazon:
In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.