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

[selah_1977]

Hi, OT-Chatter--long time no chat!

I just read the book that attempts to answer the questions that I had 
in my ninth grade world history class:  "This is world history?  
Okay, then--why is 90% of this textbook about Western civilization?"  
Ironically, the same year that I took that course, a controversial 
book called *The Bell Curve* came out. 

At least four sources this year led to my clamoring to read "Guns, 
Germs, and Steel"--a grad school seminar professor, a British ed-tour 
agency director I met in Madrid, Orson Scott Card's recent post-Ender 
novel "Shadow of the Hegemon", and Steven Barnes' alternate history 
novel "Lion's Blood".  

Quote from Amazon.com--"MacArthur fellow and UCLA evolutionary 
biologist Diamond takes as his theme no less than the rise of human 
civilizations.  On the whole this is an impressive achievement, with 
nods to the historians, anthropologists, and others who have laid the 
groundwork. Diamond tells us that the impetus for the book came from 
a native New Guinea friend, Yali, who asked him, ``Why is it that you 
white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, 
but we black people had little cargo of our own?'' The long and short 
of it, says Diamond, is biogeography."  

I've mostly read this now.  I'd like to discuss it.  Has anyone else 
read it?

If others have read it and want to discuss, and there isn't enough 
interest here, please e-mail me at selah_1977 at yahoo.com so we can 
chat.

Overall feeling:  Compelling stuff, with a few caveats.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ