YouTube kanalımda Tüfek, Mikrop ve Çelik kitabını yorumladım: https://youtu.be/QpmdwG4SHSY

Toplumların yazgılarını değiştiren olaylara evrimsel ve ekonomik coğrafya perspektifinden bakmak isterseniz kesinlikle okumanız gerektiğini düşündüğüm bir kitap.

سوال: بنظرتون چرا ما الان میوه های بی هسته ای میخوریم که میگن تو زمانایِ خیلی دور، همین میوه ها، هسته دار بودن، چطو شده خُب؟ ، کسی توضیحی داره؟
جرد دایموند: من توضیح دارم و مفصل تو کتاب "اسلحه، میکروب و فولاد"مَ نوشتم

اولا
کتابِ حاضر که با مثال هائی درخور، تحلیلی و موشکافانه به تغییراتِ سرنوشتِ جوامعِ بشری متاثر از عواملِ جغرافیائی و زیست محیطی میپردازه، توسط یوال نوح هراری نویسنده یِ شهیرِ کتاب های "انسان خردمند" و "انسان خداگونه" توصیه شده
هراری، خودش رو شدیداََ متاثر از "جَرِد دایموند"، نویسنده یِ کتابِ حاضر می دونه
:کاربری در توییتر بنام "مَمرضا"، با زبانی ساده، چکیده کتاب را چنین آورده است
سخن از فرآیندِ تاریخی یِ اهلی شدنِ گیاهان - دنیا به ما "عدالت" بدهکار نیست - باید خودمون رو با شرایط وفق بدیم - تلاش کنیم جزو برنده‌ها باشیم

دوما
کتاب دیگه ای از دایموند بنامِ "فروپاشی" با ترجمه ی فریدون مجلسی خوندم که میتونین چشمایِ نازنینتونو مهمونِ ریویو یِ کوتاهم درباره ی اون کتاب
: بفرمایین
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

توضیح اینکه: اکثر دوستانِ صاحب نظر، معتقدند خواندن این دو کتاب(کتابِ حاضر و "فروپاشی")، برای درکِ اونچه که دایموند سودایِ گفتنشو داره، ضروریه، یعنی لازم و ملزوم هم هستن

سوما
کتابِ "آشوب، نقاط عطف برای کشورهای بحران زده"، از همین نویسنده به زحمتِ نشرِ "طرح نو"، اخیرا روانه ی بازار شده است. ریویوی کتابِ بی
:نظیرِ و درس آموختنیِ "آشوب" در لینک زیر
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

خواندن تمامِ آثارِ "جرد دایموند"، بعنوانِ مخاطبی عام و حتی فراتر، در قالبِ شهروندِ ملتی، پیروِ یک دین، برآمده از قومی و گوینده ی ِ زبانی، برای فهمِ آنچه پشت سر گذاشته ایم و نگاهی دقیق تر به شناختِ تغییراتِ دنیایِ پیش رو، توصیه یِ موکد و مکرر این بنده است

این بنده را، با رفقائی که کتاب های دایموند رو با کمتر از 5ستاره موردِ تحسینِ بایسته قرار بدن، سرِ سازش نیس
Just4fun

This book reads like an earnest school essay, written with the obliviousness of someone who's so absorbed in proving their premise that they abandon entertainment along the way. I thought the yawnfest on agriculture would never end.

This is an ambitious book. It seeks to provide a simple rationale to explain why inequalities exist between the peoples of the world. What makes its approach fresh is that the analysis is from someone who is neither an economist nor a historian. Broadly speaking, Diamond pulls this off. His style is readable and his arguments well laid out. His conclusions about the importance in early human history of having the right plants and animals to promote the vital first step for a civilisation – that of developing farming, is compelling. I was also particularly impressed by his view that the orientation of a continent can foster or hinder the spread of farming, a point I had never considered.
The book’s strength is also it weakness. Jared Diamond is very good on his own ground, and so long as his narrative is based on his knowledge of anthropology, biology and geography, all is well. Once the book approaches our own times, however, his arguments become stretched. When more complicated historical, social and economic factors need explanation, his narrative becomes less convincing. That said, this is still an excellent, thought-provoking read.

Un titolo veramente interessante, da cui ho imparato molto. Mi aspettavo un libro peso, invece è scorrevole e di facile comprendimento anche per chi, come me, non ha studiato la materia. Molto completo e con diversi spunti per lunghe (anzi lunghissime) riflessioni.
Il tutto parte da una semplice domanda che l'amico (della Nuova Guinea) dell'autore fa al momento dell'arrivo degli aiuti umanitari: "come mai voi bianchi avete tutto questo cargo (inteso come ben materiali) e lo portate qui in Nuova Guinea, mentre noi neri ne abbiamo così poco?"
Da questa domanda, segue una serie di capitoli che portano ad avallare la tesi dell'autore racchiusa in una semplice risposta: "le forti disparità tra le vicende dei continenti non sono dovute a innate differenze dei popoli che li abitano, ma alle loro differenze ambientali". Queste poche parole racchiudono una storia di 13000 anni, in cui clima, territorio, predisposizione all'insediamento, la presenza o meno di determinate specie vegetali o animali e altre, seppur minime, variabili ha fatto sì che il progresso abbia avuto ritmi così diversi nei vari continenti da portare ancora oggi una netta distinzione di stile di vita tra le popolazioni mondiali.

What happens when someone with a PhD on the physiology of the gall bladder attempts a massive, big picture narrative of the history of the world and the origins of economic inequality? A big fat book with some pretty banal observations, such as:

Geography and food production affect the development of society.

Latitude is a major determinant of climate.

Fever is the body’s defense against germs, not a symptom of disease as everyone thought until they read this book.

Skin color does not reflect intelligence.

Siberia is cold.

These and other revelations abound in this incredibly stupid and wildly speculative account concocted by a professor of physiology taking a turn as a rank amateur sociologist cum archeologist cum anthropologist. He must be a wiz with gall bladders, though.

Jared Diamond's exposition on the history of civilization is far more sociological than anthropological. Beginning around 11,000 BCE, Diamond vividly describes the ebb and flow of tribes, chiefdoms, kingdoms, and states. From modest hunter gatherers the trail of human progress winds through the innovation of agriculture and the domestication of livestock to the invention of writing and the advent of industrial technologies. Along the way Diamond tracks the rise and fall and rise of zoonotic pathogens and genocidal plagues. ‘Want to know why food production spread at different rates on different continents? Or why zebras were never domesticated? Or how poisonous plants like wild almonds ever became candidates for artificial selection? If so, this is your book.

3 stars

Guns, Germs, and Steel was recommended to me by my father. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought of what Jared Diamond says. Generally speaking, this book outlines the different factors that contribute to a society succeeding and thriving, and how these factors have created the world we live in today. To answer my father, I said that I enjoyed it. It made me reflect a lot, it helped me form arguments in my IB ESS class, and in general gave me a nice insight into human history. Then, he said something that I will try to reflect on in this review: "After reading this, do you think society could have formed any other way?"

Before I get to answering that question, I'll go through a the things that I liked and didn't like about Diamond's work. This book was so unbelievably interesting. It's format made it very easy to follow along, and together it made perfect sense. This helped Diamond strengthen his theses. This organisation also makes this work very accessible, which for me (a person who wants to get more into non-fiction), was a great benefit! There are a bunch of diagrams, graphs, maps, and pictures in this book, which once again, made the reading experience more enjoyable; if you got bored, or got confused, there was sure to be an image soon to make you want to read again. The third thing that I really liked about this was the conversational narration that dominates the book. At times I felt like Mr. Diamond and I were having a conversation about the history of the world. When I switched over to the audiobook for some portions, this was accentuated even more. This style of narration ensured that you never felt like reading a history textbook, which was something I was scared of when entering this novel.

The things that I didn't really like were how the chapters meandered sometimes or just went on and on about the same thing. I feel like 50 pages could be cut. Then again, I am just one person. Another person might find value in how Diamond proves his claims through various examples and scenarios. For me, it just got a bit repetitive and I didn't have the attention span for it. Other than that, when there was a tie-in to something discussed in a previous chapter, then said thing would be proven AGAIN through various examples in the context of whatever is the main topic in this new chapter. Again, someone might find this very interesting, personally it made me a bit tired.

Ok, now to what I actually want to discuss: my father's question. After reading this book, I think that no, there is no other way society could have progressed. Maybe if we would have arisen originally on a different continent, we would be in a different place right now, but I don't know and that is what I find to be so interesting. In the prologue, Diamond sets up a thought experiment where you imagine yourself as travelling back into the past and watching the world starts all over again, but not intervening. I think that if this time-traveller version of me would be very very educated in the ways of history, importance of geography, language, etc. I would be able to predict fairly well where things will be. This makes me wonder if it is possible to predict where we will be in a thousand years or so... Kind of like how Hari Seldon does in Asimov's Foundation.

In conclusion, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good work of non-fiction. I liked how it made me reevaluate how I see the world around me. However, it did have some characteristics that I just didn't really click with. I recommend it, if you like history and are interested in why we are where we are now.

A quick take:
Not an easy read by any measure. It does deal with a lot of hardcore, sometimes too dry, but mostly interesting, archaeological/anthropological/biological/genetical/historical/cultural/geographical/economical/technological developments, facts and insights through which Diamond propounds his basic argument: why did human development proceed in such different rates on different continents; why certain societies/countries/regions became disproportionately powerful and innovative (while others lagged behind)
Starting with human evolution; geological transformation making inroads with development of civilizations; domestication of plants and animals; food production; reasons for growth in population in some regions while others seeing deaths in large numbers, owning to susceptibility to particular germs;
leading to factors behind the victory of particular regions/countries/ (race?) over others, this book indeed is an intensive read in terms of research and information.
I need a second or third read to fully comprehend the finer points of Diamond's "whirlwind tour" nearly 13,000 years of history of almost everybody, but not anytime soon though...

Jared Diamond dives into a multi-disciplinary inquiry with this book. Among the intriguing questions he raises is: “Why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?” (Location 207) Of course there was the technology gap. But again, why? He starts with the end of the Ice Age around 11,000 BC when all humans were hunter-gatherers. “Why did human development proceed at
such different rates on different continents?” (Location 228)

As a geographer he notes that the “axis” of the American continents runs North-South. Migrants crossed significantly contrasting climates and ecosystems as they moved between latitudes. Eurasia's “axis” is roughly East-West. The comparative similarity of Eurasia's climate along this belt promoted more rapid spread of populations, agriculture, and technological invention. He notes that agriculture appears to have diffused outward from southwest Asia (the fertile crescent). In the Americas, agriculture appears to have risen independently in Mesoamerica and in South America.

For Diamond, agriculture was an integral part of what he calls an autocatalytic loop that included food storage, population density, domestication of mammals for transport and labor, specialization of labor, technological development and heirarchical political organization.

Localized plant species and an absence of large mammals further impeded development in the Americas and Africa. (He excludes elephants a priori. “[A] domesticated animal is defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal's breeding and food supply).” (Location 2713) In the Americas he notes the absence of what he calls foundation species. Horses? Extinct. Bison? An interesting fact: “In the 19th and 20th centuries at least six large mammals – the eland, elk, moose, musk ox, zebra and American bison – have been the subject of especially well-organized projects aimed at domestication, carried out by modern scientific animal breeders and geneticists....Yet these modern efforts have achieved only very limited successes.” (Location 2899) A major hurdle to be blunt was “Nasty Disposition.” (Location 2945) In this category, the award apparently goes to the zebra.

He hypothecizes that domesticated animals harbored precursors to diseases that killed human populations but also promoted immunization. If correct this answers another question: “Why didn't Native American diseases instead decimate the Spanish invaders, spread back to Europe, and wipe out 95 percent of Europe's population?” (Location 3352)

Diamond revives the 19th century tradition of macrohistory in this quest for patterns and chains of cause and effect. The book is ambitious, but also grueling. My personal preference is for the microhistorical approach popularized by Mark Kurland, James Burke and Simon Winchester: choose a single object or event and draw a radiating web of connections. Nevertheless, this book was certainly thought-provoking. As new findings accumulate, it provides a useful organizational structure for future theorizing.

“In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.”
- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel



This is one of those books that once you finish, you sit back and say "yeah, um, duh". Since I'm reading this about 18 years after it was first published and probably 14 years since I bought and first perused it, it never seemed very shocking to me. Look, certain civilizations came to dominate based on a couple random, accidental, and nonracially-based situations that combined to give the Eurasian people a slight advantage once these civilizations came into contact with each other.

First, the domesticated food and animals of Eurasiaa contained more protein and more varieties of domesticated animals (pigs, cows, goats, etc) that allowed the people on the Eurasian continent to achieve a certain population density that allowed them to move from band > tribe > chiefdom > state > empire first. This density also allowed for more technological advances, more exposure and protection against herd diseases, so that when cultures collided, the more advanced societies were able to dominate. End of book. Q.E.D.

Is it still worth reading? Certainly. Just because you get the basic premise of Natural Selection does not mean you shouldn't read Darwin's classics. I'm not comparing Jared Diamond to Charles Darwin. This book isn't that good, but the apparent simplicity of the book's premise only appears simple. The argument that Diamond delivers is tight and simple but hides a lot of work.

Hóa ra người Việt Nam, Lào, Thái, Campuchia ... bị người Trung Quốc lai giống hết rồi, cụ thể là bởi các dân tộc phía Nam Trung Quốc. Dân Đông Nam Á gốc có thể phải là da đen, tóc xoăn. Và dù trước đó họ có nói bất cứ ngôn ngữ gì thì cũng đã bị xóa sạch do đó các ngôn ngữ của Đông Nam Á bây giờ là ngôn ngữ của các dân tộc phía Nam Trung Quốc... Sở dĩ bây giờ chả có người nào ở Trung Quốc nói tiếng giống người Đông Nam Á nữa là vì các tộc phía Nam đó là tộc ít người nên bị đồng hóa về mọi mặt với các tộc lớn khác từ lâu.

Rốt cuộc thì lần đầu tiên cũng đọc hết 1 cuốn sách nghìn trang, nếu không vì mục đích là khoe đọc nhiều thì chắc khó mà nhằn hết được. Vì sách khoa học làm sao đọ sự thú vị, dể hiểu với phim, truyện tranh và mục tâm sự EQ giữ lửa trên webtretho được ?
Nhưng tóm lại đây là một cuốn sách rất đáng để mua và dù có khó khăn thế nào cũng đáng để cố đọc hết. Cuốn sách làm cho ta mở mang đầu óc rất nhiều, gạt đi những suy nghĩ sai quá sai trước đây và quan trọng nhất là không có giống người nào là thượng đẳng cả, dân tộc nọ hơn dân tộc kia chủ yếu là bởi vị trí địa lí, lương thực dồi dào, khí hậu thuận lợi ... Đọc cuốn này xong liên tưởng đến câu "vật chất quyết định ý thức " thấy quá đúng mà.