Copyright: 1997

Publisher: Norton

ISBN: 0393038912

I wanted to enjoy Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and it started off well.  He details a conversation he had with a New Guinean who asked a simple question, "Why was it the whites that invaded New Guinea and not the other way around?"  This book is Diamond's answer to the question.  No, it's not that white people are smarter, faster, stronger and better than everyone else.  In a nutshell, it's because of geography, climatology and agronomy.

Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that Diamond likes to repeat himself.  After establishing his basic argument he spend the next 300 pages rehashing the same thing over and over again.  In academia this is known as being thorough.  In the lay-world, this is known as wasting my time.  I get it, move on.

Also detracting from my enjoyment of this book was the fact that it was a library copy and a previous patron had written in the margins extensively.  Please, please, please I beg of you... if you borrow a book from the library do not ever write in the book. I am sure that whatever this person wrote was insightful and thoughtful to them but the few comments I read made little sense and worse appeared to be attempts to influence the thinking of the next reader.  Poor form.

This book was highly recommended on several lists that I came across but as I mentioned I was very disappointed at the verbosity of the author.  I have other books to read so now I will move on. Apologies to Mr. Diamond, he is an intelligent man but don't read the book, watch the documentary and save yourself a lot of time.