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dda9's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting book that seeks to answer the question, why have some societies developed in complexity and technology while others have remained less "developed". Diamond's book is written in an easy-to-read style.
andresvk's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
2.0
Needless to say, this is a very contentious book, and generally despised by historians.
What I can say about it as a read for people who (like me) are interested in history but not trained in it is this: while there is truth to the central claim that disease resistance from animal domestication played a large part in the colonization of the Americas, it doesn't explain as much as Diamond thinks it does, and the book is too bloated by his attempt to make that one argument a general theory of history.
I got as much out of it as I would have gotten from an online summary.
What I can say about it as a read for people who (like me) are interested in history but not trained in it is this: while there is truth to the central claim that disease resistance from animal domestication played a large part in the colonization of the Americas, it doesn't explain as much as Diamond thinks it does, and the book is too bloated by his attempt to make that one argument a general theory of history.
I got as much out of it as I would have gotten from an online summary.
eamcmahon3's review against another edition
4.0
This book has been heralded by almost every social studies teacher I had growing up. I had heard all these thoughts before but it was nice to have in a concise format. This book is getting old at this point, so an updated version would be nice.
marina_ofthesea's review against another edition
3.0
Epic, informative... But so tragically redundant.
bansolitude's review against another edition
4.0
My biggest beef was with the writing style. Each chapter is a self contained entity, which meant a lot of repetition. This was quite annoying for me, as someone who read the book cover to cover.