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Let me start off by comparing this book to another hugely popular title: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. These two books are often lumped together - they both essentially take a long view of human history - but they are different in so many ways. Starting with the writing style: Harari is engaging and easy to read while Diamond is far drier and often belabouring. However, in substance and thoughtfulness, Diamond's nuance and brilliance are far superior to Harari's smug simplicity. Diamond considers every factor and examines his evidence in detail, while Harari makes sweeping assertions and puts his conclusions before his evidence. Both take essentially a materialist view of the world, Diamond's geographic determinism being just that, but Harari takes his reductionism to a monistic extreme, rejecting anything he can't touch or see, while Diamond is willing to consider alternative causal explanations for historical outcomes, and even concedes that his theory doesn't reduce everything to geography alone, but only that geography is the strongest ultimate cause for human differences.
The books starts strong, and the prologue does a good job giving a disclaimer about what what the book is and is not; it is not a justification of colonialism or genocide, only an explanation of why Europeans were the colonizers and Native Americans the colonized. The prologue succeeds in pre-empting many of the challanges that critics bring up. For those of you who have read reviews that are critical of Diamond's alleged "Euro-centrism", I would advise you to read just the prologue and see that Diamond himself repudiates any such accusations. He also anticipates the complaint that his theory is reductionist. He stresses that it is not, as I mentioned above.
The first three parts of the book builds up the basics of this theory - that the differences between advanced and primitive civilizations ultimately trace back to the superior food production capacity of some regions, among other geographic factors, and the ability for advances such as domesticable crops, livestock, writing, political organization, and technology to be shared across distances (and famously, more easily across East-West axes than across North-South). These are important because they supported large concentrations in population, which in turn led to other advances, in what Diamond calls a self-catalyzing process. The second and third parts of the books go into the finer detail of each of these processes, and while at this point the book starts to sound repetitive, these chapters add enough nuance to make it interesting. By the fourth part of the book, however, in which Diamond applies his theory to each of the continents, it does start to get tiresome.
The strongest part of the book, in my opinion, comes at the very end, in the Epilogue and the Afterword (2003 edition). There's a very interesting discussion in the Epilogue that seems to have gotten much attention about why it was Europe rather than China that became the colonial superpower than colonized the Western hemisphere. He talks about how connectedness can be positive or negative. In the case of China, the extreme connectedness was at first a positive because it allowed crops and technology to be shared across the country, but it was also a negative when a single centralized authority had absolute authoritarian power to shut down the Chinese maritime project. Europe, on the other hand, because of its moderate connectedness, enjoyed the benefits of the sharing of ideas, yet its fragmented geography ultimately allowed Columbus to shop around his idea of sailing West to the various fragmented political regimes. This same idea is found in Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, and in Joel Mokyr's A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.
The Epilogue also has a short discussion about cultural causes and the great-man theory. The latter he dismisses but the former he entertains. His discussion is well nuanced though, and worth contemplating. Finally, the end of the Epilogue talks about history as a science and is one of the best discussions I've seen on the topic. He explains why the scientific methods familiar to physicists could or could not work for historical sciences as well. Edward O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge has some good ideas on this topic too which don't make their way into Diamond's treatment, but he comes close. In fact, the author I would characterize as most similar to Diamond would be Edward O. Wilson. His books The Social Conquest of Earth and Consilience complement this book very well. This segment is perhaps one of the most important parts of this book, and I would recommend everyone read it even if they don't read the rest of the book. It's important enough that it deserves its own book or a long essay at the very least.
Overall, this book deserves its status as an ultimate classic, and there is enough nuance and detail that a short summary won't do. If you think you already understand the main ideas of this book from a review or YouTube video you watched on it, I would challenge that you don't. The style does get a bit repetitive and dry, but if you pay enough attention to the details, it should keep you enthralled.
The books starts strong, and the prologue does a good job giving a disclaimer about what what the book is and is not; it is not a justification of colonialism or genocide, only an explanation of why Europeans were the colonizers and Native Americans the colonized. The prologue succeeds in pre-empting many of the challanges that critics bring up. For those of you who have read reviews that are critical of Diamond's alleged "Euro-centrism", I would advise you to read just the prologue and see that Diamond himself repudiates any such accusations. He also anticipates the complaint that his theory is reductionist. He stresses that it is not, as I mentioned above.
The first three parts of the book builds up the basics of this theory - that the differences between advanced and primitive civilizations ultimately trace back to the superior food production capacity of some regions, among other geographic factors, and the ability for advances such as domesticable crops, livestock, writing, political organization, and technology to be shared across distances (and famously, more easily across East-West axes than across North-South). These are important because they supported large concentrations in population, which in turn led to other advances, in what Diamond calls a self-catalyzing process. The second and third parts of the books go into the finer detail of each of these processes, and while at this point the book starts to sound repetitive, these chapters add enough nuance to make it interesting. By the fourth part of the book, however, in which Diamond applies his theory to each of the continents, it does start to get tiresome.
The strongest part of the book, in my opinion, comes at the very end, in the Epilogue and the Afterword (2003 edition). There's a very interesting discussion in the Epilogue that seems to have gotten much attention about why it was Europe rather than China that became the colonial superpower than colonized the Western hemisphere. He talks about how connectedness can be positive or negative. In the case of China, the extreme connectedness was at first a positive because it allowed crops and technology to be shared across the country, but it was also a negative when a single centralized authority had absolute authoritarian power to shut down the Chinese maritime project. Europe, on the other hand, because of its moderate connectedness, enjoyed the benefits of the sharing of ideas, yet its fragmented geography ultimately allowed Columbus to shop around his idea of sailing West to the various fragmented political regimes. This same idea is found in Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, and in Joel Mokyr's A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.
The Epilogue also has a short discussion about cultural causes and the great-man theory. The latter he dismisses but the former he entertains. His discussion is well nuanced though, and worth contemplating. Finally, the end of the Epilogue talks about history as a science and is one of the best discussions I've seen on the topic. He explains why the scientific methods familiar to physicists could or could not work for historical sciences as well. Edward O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge has some good ideas on this topic too which don't make their way into Diamond's treatment, but he comes close. In fact, the author I would characterize as most similar to Diamond would be Edward O. Wilson. His books The Social Conquest of Earth and Consilience complement this book very well. This segment is perhaps one of the most important parts of this book, and I would recommend everyone read it even if they don't read the rest of the book. It's important enough that it deserves its own book or a long essay at the very least.
Overall, this book deserves its status as an ultimate classic, and there is enough nuance and detail that a short summary won't do. If you think you already understand the main ideas of this book from a review or YouTube video you watched on it, I would challenge that you don't. The style does get a bit repetitive and dry, but if you pay enough attention to the details, it should keep you enthralled.
