Guns, Germs and Steel
So when I went to empty out my Border's giftcard the other day I didn't find a copy of 'Ishmael' or 'My Ishmael', but I did find a copy of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' by Jared Diamond.
Very good book. Read some of it in the old hardback version, this newer paperback version includes a chapter he wrote later about how history is affecting modern politics today.
One sentence summary by the author: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves."
Very dry description of a very well written book about the rise of 'civilization', the ways that environmental conditions changed the results in different parts of the world, and what happened when those societies collided.
posted by Hythian at 6:56:00 pm
6 Comments:
Huh!
Yes, I read this book a while ago. QUITE thorough. I am thinking of getting the next one, which is I believe titled Collapse. I read an excerpt of it in one of my magazines, and it looks even more engaging than G G & S.
Guns can be a BIT dry, no argument there. Kind of dense, and he's a bit...humorless. Still, an interesting read which, to my mind, thoroughly demolishes the racial arguments for success and failure in a civilization.
Hmm...I wonder if you should e-mail Diamond and see if he wants to play Civ 4 against you online. See if he REALLY knows his stuff! : )
Fri Jan 06, 07:14:00 pm GMT-8
I peeked at his "The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal" ages ago but don't own a copy.
Have actually seen "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" in the store but it didn't process at the time that it was by him. Will have to give it a go after I finish "G G&S".
Actually, I was thinking about that in terms of Civ4 today. I think Civ3 actually modelled the rarity of resources better as a restricting factor for development.
In Civ3, if you didn't have 'saltpeter' to make gunpowder units or 'rubber' to make mechanized units later on you were pretty amazingly thoroughly screwed.
Resources in Civ4 instead tend to instead increase the rate at which your cities can develop and it feels like far fewer military units ( tanks needing Oil for example ) are restricted by resource requirements.
Also, no version of Civ that I have played ( I never really played the two 'Call to Power' games as they weren't 'Sid Meier' Civilization games ) really modelled the 'Germs' part of G G & S. The closest it comes is unhealthiness due to jungle environments in Civ3 causing population loss and in Civ4 unhealthiness reduces the maximum size cities can attain ( well, unhealthiness and food production ).
Fri Jan 06, 09:11:00 pm GMT-8
He also wrote "Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality" which I haven't read.
Fri Jan 06, 09:18:00 pm GMT-8
I know I've got a copy of Quinn's first book laying around the house... maybe two.
Pretty quick read: you could probably knock it out during downtime this week, or on one of our 300 drives.
I have to confess, though, that reading a book called 'why is sex fun' by someone referred to as 'humorless'...
Well, it's not a draw :)
Mon Jan 09, 09:05:00 am GMT-8
Sounds like what you picked up would go very well with Quinn's stuff, also. Except for the sex book; sex and gorillas don't mix; at least not in my book...
Mon Jan 09, 09:48:00 am GMT-8
I have seen way way way too many programs on the Discovery channel that seemed to involved gorillas having sex.
For a while I thought their entire programming line-up was: "Primates Having Sex", "Strange Animals In The Ocean", "People Getting Abducted By UFOs". And yet, it was still better then most everything else that was on television as my local cable provider didn't have Cartoon Network yet at the time.
Mon Jan 09, 10:46:00 am GMT-8
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