Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared DiamondMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is an important, perceptive work that aims to fight against racist interpretations that the march to ward progress of various peoples is biological, not based on their environment, opportunity, and access to resources. (That is really something we still need to fight?) Diamond does well making his point with continental topography (longitudinal axis of Eurasian versus the longitudinal one of the Western Hemisphere, e.g.), and climes (it's easier to bring crops marching on the same latitude than into other climate zones). This 13,000 year history is bolstered by calibrated C14 dating, which he does well to stress.
His surveys of botany, animal domestications, linguistics, etc. are high-level and thus easily understood in this populist yet enlightening work. This updated version has a chapter dedicated to Japan. There apparently was a real need to approach the thorny issue of Korean or Japanese primacy on the island chain, which Diamond does delicately even though this really seems to stray from the point. Why not instead bring in more recent science, such as evidence for pre-Clovis Polynesian colonization of South America?
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