گزارش جذابی از تاریخ هر چیزی در 13000 سال گذشته. «جِرد ماسون دایموند»، نویسنده‌ی کتاب، زیست‌شناس تکاملی، فیزیولوژیست و جغرافی‌دانِ زیستی است. وی که مولف شماری از آثاری‌ست که در آنها انسان‌شناسی، زیست‌شناسی، ژنتیک و تاریخ در هم آمیخته‌اند، در مقدمه‌ی کتاب انگیزه‌ی تالیف خود از این کتاب را این پرسش اساسی می‌داند: چرا تاریخ در قاره‌های مختلف به گونه‌ای متفاوت رخ داده است؟ او یافتن این پاسخ را در گرو ملاحظات بوم‌شناختی محل زندگی انسان‌ها می‌داند و با روش یک دانشمند واقعی، تفسیری شگرف از آن ارائه می‌کند
کتاب جایزه‌ی پولیتزر گرفته و به نزدیک بر 30 زبان جهان ترجمه شده است. از آن دست کتاب‌هایی‌ست که باید حتمن خواندشان. روایت است که «جول موکیر«، تاریخ‌نگار اقتصاد، زمانی که صفحه اول کتاب را دیده گفته "این احمق کیست؟ ادعای او برای گفتوگو درمورد تاریخ اقتصاد دیوانه‌کننده است، من اینجا کارشناس اقتصاد هستم!". او 50صفحه بیشتر جلو نرفته که عاشق کتاب شده! اگر تابه حال سمت کتاب‌های علمی نرفته‌اید نگران نباشید. متن جذاب کتاب، به همراه روش‌شناسیِ قویِ نویسنده، باعث می‌شود خیلی زود با موضوع ارتباط برقرار کرده، از خواندن آن لذت ببرید

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.

n  “Why you white men have so much cargo [i.e., steel tools and other products of civilization] and we New Guineans have so little?”n

Jared Diamond is a biologist, who had a passion for studying birds, particularly the birds of New Guinea. But as he came to know and appreciate the many native people he met in his work, the question asked by a New Guinean named Yani remained with him. Why was it that westerners had so much relative to New Guinean natives, who had been living on that land for forty thousand years. Many found an explanation in racial exceptionalism. Diamond decided to find out. Was one group of people smarter than another? Why was there such dimorphism in the amount of cargo produced and toted by different groups?

The arguments he seeks to counter are those stating that since "civilization" came to full flower in the Eurasian countries and not in places where other races dominated, that this success indicated innate superiority. He offers a stunning analysis of why civilization emerged in the places in which it did.


Jared Diamond – image from The Guardian

Guns figure large in why some societies were able dominate others, but the development of guns was not a universal. The materials necessary are not equally distributed over the planet, and there are technological prerequisites.

It turns out that not every locale is ideal for the emergence of farming. He offers some detail on why farming flourished in some areas more than in others. The importance of domesticated animals is considered. Diamond shows how it was possible for them to have been domesticated in some, but not all of the theoretically possible locations. He discusses the impact of germs, the immunity defense developed by more urban dwellers, and the harm those germs can cause when those urban dwellers come into contact with peoples who lack such immunities. Although "Steel" figures prominently in the title, and is significant in its use in weaponry, this aspect is given the lightest treatment in the book. Diamond closes with a plea for history to be redefined as History Science, claiming that, as with many other "historical" sciences, it holds the elements necessary to merit the "science" designation.

While I might have been happier if the title had been Guns, Germs, and Seeds, it remains a seminal look at the whys and wherefores of how some societies came to flourish, often at the expense of others. It has nothing to do with genes. Guns, Germs and Steel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

An  excellent National Geogrtaphic documentary  was made of this book. Here is a link to the first of its three episodes.

Diamond's book Collapse, is also amazing.

Guns, Germs, and Steel
by Jared Diamond

This is not light reading. The author goes into a lot of detail covering a wide range of evidence supporting his thesis. But damn it’s interesting.

The premise for the book is stated in the first chapter “Yali’s Question”. That is why did some societies/people advance differently than others. For instance, why did the people of Eurasia develop so many products and the people of Guinea remain basically hunter-gathers. The author rephrases this question and wonders why did the countries of Europe conquer and colonize the Americas and not the Native Americans conquer and colonize Europe. He later rephrases it again as why didn’t Africa conquer Europe and import Native Americans to work as slaves.

Thus begins a very interesting analysis.

The author deals with the Racism issue early in the book. He attributes any appearance of more “intelligence” as a product of the environment and is not biological.

n  The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong. Sound evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence that parallel human differences in technology is lacking. n

(Page 19)

Differences in intelligence are more attributable to social environment and educational opportunities than to biological reasons.

(It’s been a while since I read it but The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould deals with this question quite well.)

The title of the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” serves as a shorthand for the reasons Europeans conquered the natives of the New World instead of Native Americans colonizing Europe. The immediate reasons are the technology employed by the Europeans based of guns, steel weapons, and horses, the germs they brought with them to the New World, the ships that allowed them to cross the oceans, the centralized political organization of European states, and the communication gained through writing.

A major part of his argument is that the production of food allowed these civilizations to advance. Once food was available people no longer needed to be hunting and gathering each day. The domestication of plants and animals allowed people to settle down in one place and provided them the stability to develop better ways of living.

This domestication of plants required that the plant have certain characteristics making it a reliable source of food. It also needed a climate that allowed the plants to grow. Out of all the plants available in a location not all of them had the needed requirements. Likewise all locations did not have the qualifying climate.

The same held true for animals. Very few animals have ever been domesticated. Even over the last few thousand years there are no new domesticated animals. He attributes this to the Anna Karenina principle.

n  To be domesticated, a candidate wild species must possess many different characteristics. Lack of any single required characteristic dooms efforts at domestication, just as it dooms efforts at building a happy marriage.
n

(Page 169).


It is pointed out that in terms of conquering an area nothing matched germs and their accompanying diseases. More people were killed by germs and the diseases they caused than by any military campaign.

The germs themselves were not something that resulted from some creative design. The author points out frequently that agriculture and its accompanying settlements created an ideal laboratory for germs. Especially living in close proximity with animals. He also says that living in dense populated areas helped the germs spread their diseases, but also helped people develop immunities. It was these immunities that the Native Americans lacked when the disease was brought to the Americas.

The author emphasizes the importance of continents in the spread of advances in civilizations. His analysis deals with each continent individually. An important part is the axis of a continent. For the purposes of this book he combines Europe and Asia into Eurasia. Eurasia with its East/West axis facilitated the spread of technology and food production because the area shared the same latitude. That meant the plants and animals from one area weren’t subject to huge changes in environment from one part of the continent to another.

Likewise people, plants and animals in the Americas and in Africa had to travel through and survive various climates from any travels along the axis of those continents.

One of the questions the author brings up is why did Europe conquer so much of the world and not China. China had a long head start in the development of food and especially technology.

One of the reasons is the early unification of the people of China under one government. The resulting authoritarian rule prevented the competition of ideas. That was not the case in Europe where several small states competed with each other for dominance. There any development which gave one state an advantage over another was quickly exploited.

While reading this I was arguing with myself (I won) about whether this was a “History” book. I felt that it is important to understand the founding of the civilizations that I read about. At the end of the book the author himself makes this argument about whether history is a science. He states that to some “History is just one damn fact after another.” In this book the author is using archeology, linguistics and genetics to make his case.

This book is the first of a trilogy. While I was reading this I doubted I would tackle the next one anytime soon. Learning this much is fatiguing. But this was an enjoyable and enlightening book so I will be getting the next one, Collapse, soon.

The first impression that history gave me was of a never ending series of dates and occurences which needless to say is an extremely boring way to learn. The whole perspective of history changed for me when I began viewing this like I do soil. Multiple layers all held together by a common force, some of them interleaving and some totally independent with each layer telling a story of its own. At one point of time, the layer of top soil thinks of itself as invincible but with changing circumstances it paves way for the next layer. History is similar to this in many ways and such a perspective forms the wireframe for this wonderful book.

In roughly 400 pages, Jared Diamond gives a highly compressed version of the world as it is. His is not a dry recounting of occurences and how they shaped world events. Rather he delves deeper into why the world is as it is right now. Why did the Western civilizations get to influence the world more ? Why were the conquerors of lands across the world from the Eurasian landmass ? The answer to all these questions lies in the title of book : Guns, Germs and Steel. At first glance all three of these factors are entirely unrelated but on a deeper look they prove to be the most decisive factors that cut across world history. The conquerors who brought the guns overpowered the masses and they brought along with them the germs of epidemics from across the seas. Those that did not fall by the bullets, fell by the diseases and then it was a relatively easy way (full of corpses !) that the European conquerors could walk across. The author goes into details of the Spanish conquest of the Incas, The extermination of the American Indians and subduing the Aborgines of Australia as examples of these.

The power of the weapon and of the germs was not the only factor of power for the Western world. What really set apart Eurasia was its power of food production. This is where the steel part comes in. What fascinated me most were the questions that Jared Diamond poses and answers. For instance : Both agriculture and animal husbandry began in the fertile crescent - which is modern day Iraq and thereabouts but then how did the center of power shift westward ? When China had a headstart from all other parts of the world in everything from agriculture to maritime navigation why did they lag behind others in innovation ? The first human beings began life in Africa so how did the continent go far behind ? All these questions do not have simple straightforward answers but answers that are an amalgamation of economic,social,political and environmental factors. The author explains all these in depth and satisfactory detail.

The analysis, interpretations and observations in this book are not things that glance at the skin and fall away but they are facts that go down to the bone marrow of present civilizations. The research that Jared Diamond would have done for this book shows in the pages.

Undoubtedly one of the best and most informative books I have read in the last two years. Highly recommended for those who love a strong dose of cultural history, anthropology and a study of civilizations.

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

Title: I see the emperor's new clothes

I came late to the party on this one. I had high hopes. Alas, they are dashed. This book was such a disappointment., on so many levels. I'm glad I'm not alone in this. The other 1-star reviews on Amazon are a treasure trove of reasons *not* to read Guns, Germs, and Steel and also other, better books to read. Four I recommend heartily on similar topics:

Staring into Chaos: Explorations in the Decline of Western Civilization
The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History
Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own

Now for my thoughts on Guns, Germs, and Steel. And, admittedly, I stopped reading at about page 100. I could hardly make it through the Prologue. There Diamond provides the germ (no pun intended) of this book, which has its origins in a simple question posed to the author decades ago by an acquaintance as they were walking on a beach in New Guinea: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [material wealth] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Diamond immediately dismisses IQ (p. 19), a field of research more than a hundred years old used by governments, businesses, schools, and militaries to great effect (see Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own, Jones, 2016). In one paragraph Diamond dismisses this entire (and proven) body of research and then spends two pages arguing for native New Guineans genetic superiority over European/American peoples. This is classic denial on Diamond's part. Ignore the science that you don't like; embrace what you do like.

"From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is" (p. 20). Wow! What a statement! Diamond is using himself as an "N of 1," ignoring thousands of years of history! He continues down his lonesome, illogical path: "It's easy to recognize two reasons why my impression that New Guineans are smarter than Westerners may be correct." This is laughable, but he's serious. So from this nothingness springs Diamond's claim: "...in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners" (p. 21). My jaw was on the floor. Absolutely astounding. Here is Diamond's "scientific process" in a nutshell: 1. I'm impressed by X. 2. I'll explain X by what I myself believe. 3. What I just claimed about X must be scientifically true.

It's perfectly acceptable to claim that New Guineans are "genetically superior to Westerners," but don't you dare claim the reverse. Because that would be racist, right?

It's easy to hate white people, and trendy and popular, and Jared Diamond shows us how.

But let's see what other researchers have to say about their experiences in New Guinea.

o "And we've had one corpse float by, a newborn infant; they are always throwing away infants here, as the fathers object to observing the taboos associated with their survival" (Letters From the Field, 1925 - 1975, Margaret Mead, 1977)

o "...infanticide, especially female infanticide, was quite common throughout New Guinea. The Bena Bena, for example, often killed a newborn daughter if the mother already had a small child to care for, and they also typically killed one of a pair of twins." (Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-cultural Perspectives, edited by Jill E. Korbin, 1982, p. 14)

o "In New Guinea one can find infanticide, initiation rites, child mutilations, sale of infants for both marriage and sacrifice, and forced homosexuality, to name only the more dramatic examples" (ibid, p. 13)

o When tribal mothers were asked why they killed their infants, they stated it was because they were “demon children,” because “children are too much trouble,” because “it was a girl and must be killed,” or “because her husband would go to another woman” for sex if she had to nurse the infant. Children watched their mothers bury their siblings live, eat them, or toss them to sows to devour—or else they would force the grown-up children to help them kill their siblings or even sometimes make them kill live infants purchased for murdering from other tribes. Mothers who ate their children are described as “overcome by frightful hunger for baby meat”—again, not because of lack of food, but because of an inner need to re-incorporate infants after losing them at birth. (The Origins of War in Child Abuse, Lloyd DeMause, Chapter 7)

o "Females in New Guinea are treated brutally. Since they are routinely viewed as secretly being witches “who can kill simply by staring at a person” (Killer Mother alters), they are often killed simply because they are imagined to have poisoned people. Mothers in New Guinea are horribly abused as girls, being routinely raped by fathers, brothers, visitors, peers, gangs. When they become wives they are treated brutally by men and have suicide rates as high as 25 percent." (ibid)

And one more from DeMause's book:

o "New Guinea mothers constantly “rub the penes of their infant sons [and] the little boys…have erections” while they sleep naked together at night. One boy described to Poole how whenever his mother was depressed or angry she often “pulled, pinched, rubbed, or flicked a fingernail against his penis” until he cried, afraid it might break off. “It hurts inside,” he said. “It bleeds in there and hurts when I pee…Mother not like my penis, wants to cut it off.” Males also masturbated and sucked children’s genitals, both sexes, using the child as a maternal breast as all pedophiles do. Mothers also masturbate and kiss the vagina of baby girls. Malinowski reports watching the widespread sucking of genitals and intercourse between children in Melanesia, encouraged by parents, so that most girls are raped by the time they are seven years old.40 New Guinea fathers rarely care for their little children, but when they do they mainly fondle their genitals, using the child as a breast-object “because they say they get sexually aroused when they watch them nurse.”

*This* is the culture and society Diamond states that he *prefers* over Western/American culture/society. What a sick man. That, or he's a liar, or, worse, a charlatan. In any case, Diamond is fooling thousands with his book.

Diamond writes: "Many of the white colonialists openly despised New Guineans as 'primitive.'" Well, that may have something to do with what those Europeans witnessed: child sacrifice, child rape, forced homosexuality, sales of infants, mutilations, cannibalism, etc etc.

What really got me was how Diamond -- a so-called expert in his field -- is *completely* unaware of this previously published research on the absolutely horrific child abuse in New Guinea. But I know about it. No wonder the academic world is in the state it's in. It's a joke, and a bad one at that.

Diamond sums up his book in one sentence: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves" (p. 25).

"Mobile bands of hunter-gatherers are relatively egalitarian..." (p. 29).Wrong. Hobbes was right. Warfare is in mankind's blood. (see Science shows Thomas Hobbes was right – which is why the Right-wing rule the Earth, The Telegraph, September 29, 2016). Also see quotes on New Guinea populations in above cited works.

So even before we're out of this book's Prologue we get a sense of Diamond's biases, scientific research ignorance, and desire to hoodwink his readers. That's a real shame, because he put a lot of effort into this work. But when a reader has to question everything he reads, it's not enjoyable.

This work is an excellent illustration of a man with a conclusion in search of a hypotheses. In other words, Diamond does the opposite of what he claims. He's not letting the evidence lead him where it might; he starts with his conclusion in mind and builds a case to support it. He's working backwards. He's not a scientist at all.

So, to answer Yali's Question: Your society might get ahead if you stop eating and sacrificing your infants, raping your daughters, sexually abusing your sons, selling your infants into slavery and forcing them into homosexual activities, and abusing your women. That'd be a start.

Reading the book

I trudged on.

Diamond uses coy phrasing throughout--Great Leap Forward (no, not the Chinese one where multiple millions of people starved or were executed), uses terms like "colonization" both negatively and positively, as it suits him; and favors Australia/New Guinea in his discourse.

In Chapter 2 in his extraordinarily detailed description of the human colonization of the Polynesian islands, including Hawaii, he fails to mention ritualistic human sacrifice (and cannibalism) as usually practiced for canoe launches, war parties, etc. Diamond mentions gladly the temples on Hawaii but fails to mention human sacrifices practiced there. I wonder why. (Search "Polynesian human sacrifice" and "Polynesian cannibal feasts" for details.)

Chapter 3 reads like some high schooler's breathless explanation of European conquests in the Americas. Surprise! Greater societies conquer lesser societies!

Chapter 4. Wow. Chapter 4 is titled Farmer Power, but halfway through Diamond gets sidetracked with horses (and then germs) and their influence on war. Here's a gem: "The most direct contribution of plant and animal domestication to wars of conquest was from Eurasia's horses, whose military role made them the jeeps and Sherman tanks of ancient warfare on that continent" (p. 86). Wut? I literally laughed out loud. This book won a Pulitzer Prize?

A few pages later:

"The peoples of areas with a head start on food production thereby gained a head start on the path leading toward guns, germs, and steel. The result was a long series of collisions between the haves and the have-nots of history" (p. 99). Was that written by a 10th grader in her Social Sciences class?

I can't take it anymore.

It's difficult for me to understand how a book like this can be so popular, even winning the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and then also the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. It's simply discouraging to read (part of) such a poorly written book and know that it's been so successful. But then I sift through hundreds of news feeds and Twitter, and the only thing I can think is that it's trendy to hate white people nowadays, particularly white men, and blame them for every ill in the world.

Remember, when Native Americans were putting up mud walls in half caves in Arizona, when New Guineans were killing their children and raping them, and when Native Hawaiians were sacrificing humans, Europeans were building the cathedral at Notre Dame (all events circa 1100 AD).

Does culture matter? You bet. And it's important to study the differences among cultures and societies to explain those differences. But this isn't the book to do that.

Did not like it
1/5 Goodreads
1/5 Amazon

Very interesting and thought provoking history book. nice laid out and logical theories on the evolution of empires and conquest. Very recommended

Γιατί κάποιοι λαοί επικράτησαν ,έναντι κάποιων άλλων; Γιατί κάποιες κοινωνίες εξελίχτηκαν περισσότερο; Οι απαντήσεις σε αφήνουν άφωνο. Ίσως μια καλή πρόταση σωφρονισμού ,για όσους κατηγορούνται για ρατσιστικά εγκλήματα , είναι να καλούνται να διαβάσουν αυτό το βιβλίο ! Τα πληρέστερα επιχειρήματα , έναντι κάθε ρατσιστικής διάθεσης. Ένας πραγματικός θησαυρός γνώσεων.

Without overdoing the pun, everything by Diamond shines and shines. This is his greatest work. Occasionally in life you can feel a book shifting the way you see the world, shifting what you thought you knew about the world. There is a documentary made around this book, but read the book - trust me.

Why didn't the indigenous people of the Americas, Oceania, and sub-equatorial Africa conquer Europe and its people? Why was it the other way around?

Why didn't agriculture, cities, the wheel, writing, craftsmanship of metal processing originate in Europe? Why did it instead originate in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) and its surrounding areas? These are some very intriguing questions discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) written by Jared Diamond.

This book is a brief history of the human evolution of the last 13,000 years with a focus on social evolution, ethnology, and ecology. The book also pays special attention to the regions which boarder the vast Pacific Ocean.

Well, the Europeans discovered and conquered the Americas and Oceania because they were a more advance civilization. The Europeans had firearms, metal weapons, logistical technology that conquered land and sea, written language, centralized political power, and contagious diseases with which they infected and killed the natives, as the Europeans have already become genetically resistant to and acquired an immunity to those contagious diseases.

The reason why the cradle of civilization originated in the Fertile Crescent is due to its specific geographical characteristics of the environment that had more favorable ecological conditions compared to other regions and Diamond states that it had nothing to do with the biology of those people. This region had access to metal based material for their tools and weapons. They were surrounded by animals that could be domesticated for defense, labour, and food. Last but not least, the Mesopotamians had local available plants that were edible and easily cultivated. All in all, in general, the Eurasians had a more favorable environment, a head start, a greater population, larger continent, and this is why they had an advantage on the people of the Americas, Oceania, and sub-equatorial Africa. I am assuming this is part of the story, but I can name several counter arguments. I was expecting a lot more, and I just wasn't satisfied with the arguments presented, nor were they all convincing. I can't recall any creative ideas or clever theories in this book. The influence of culture was discussed, but hardly religion or genetics.

Diamond also very briefly discusses how the development of technology was amplified by a cumulative effect which reminded me of how well Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker (1986) explained the various positive feedback loops and the cumulative effect in biological evolution.

The book is well-written and informative, this is a given, but many things are unnecessarily being repeated throughout the book with too many recapitulations. It could all have been more concise.

(3.5/5.0)

In his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond provided a STRANGE TYPE OF BIBLIOGRAPHY. There are no references to research sources in the body of the text to support whatever statements the author makes.

Instead, there is a section titled "Further Readings". There are some references in this section, but there are no direct matches between those works and statements in the text. A lack of references makes this text more readable for casual readers, and that helps the book's sales.

However, at the same time, any statements in the text effectively become just opinions of the book's author without support from other researchers. With that, the information in the book becomes less credible, and respectfully, the hype about the book becomes overrated.