Opinions?

Just make the general about this fucking book if you want to discuss it over and over so much.

>>3130083
Fucking awful. How many times do we have to teach you this lesson.

>>3130083
>25 year rule

Enjoy your ban.

>>3130103
Can you elaborate?

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>>3130083
As someone who actually read it I can say that it's decent.

It does a good job of trying cram most of human history in such a short book and taught me quite a bit about the way agriculture worked and developed. A picture of someone riding a zebra isn't a refutation of 90% of the books content.

The only problem I have with it is that it describes how the cards were dealt but little in terms of how the game was played. He talked about China vs. Europe and basically boils it down to rivers in Europe and a coastline in China. It misses a lot of nuance when it comes to the past 2000 years of history. He posits geographical determinism as the cause of all things and disregards the human factor. Culture and politics simply don't get an awful lot of attention.

Despite all the memery on /his/ I would wholeheartedly recommend it to most people as you're bound to learn something new. You don't have to accept his conclusion to find it an enjoyable read.

>>3130083
I've had this thing on my shelf for two years after picking it up in a garage sale.
Posted it on /lit/ asking if it was good after the fact, got told it was trash.
Still haven't read it.

>>3130203
Thanks, I might actually read it now.

>>3130203
PS, it's pop history so its east to read. If you're not a pleb you can read the thing in a few days.

>>3130203
>>3130213
PPS, It isn't a very politically correct work either. He unashamedly talks about how violent some tribal societies were and he relates something about a guy fucking a sheep.

>>3130203
plz, the history is mediocre at best, which is forgiveable, but the strawmanning and clickbaity bullshit is not

https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel/Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel_djvu.txt

>In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren't: as you will see, the answers to the question don't involve human racial differences at all.

>in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners

>>3130226
>in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners

Doesn't pol make the same argument about Cro-Magnons having bigger brain capacities?

Anyways I don't agree with Diamond on that part but i'd still recommend people read his book. If for nothing else than to know such an (in)famous work and possible refute it

>>3130083

His reason for chinas lack of development doesnt account for or include the damage that the mongols did

>>3130249
If it was an attempt to show the flimsiness of their reasoning by using the same reasoning to reach a different conclusion, it was very confusing and intellectually dishonest. Is the reader supposed to take it seriously? If not, are they supposed to assume the rest of the book is full of sophistry and wordplay? Is JD going to clarify issues like individual variation, heritability, the complexities of genetics and defining "intelligence", the mistakes that can be made trying to determine whether a trait is due to nature or nurture and flesh out his theory that New Guineans are genetically superior? It seems like he would rather not talk about it even though it is like half of what he should be looking if the topic is genetics v environment as a cause of the great divergence.

Though yeah, it is a good case study of how objectivity can suffer in a controversial topic even when the "good guys" are doing the talking.

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BTFO!!!!

>>3130446
Are you implying we should reenstate slavery and colonialism based on this alone?

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>>3130083
>muh biogeographic determinism
>muh new guineans are as smart as europeans

>>3130083
it's history for plebs or casuals. basically it wants to dumb down multiple complex events in history into one easy sentence so people can be convinced of bullshit arguments and ideas today.

if you actually study the cultures and ideas he talks about you'd realize he's wrong

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>>3130083
Its a meme tier book that gives a hand-wave explanation to a question that's far too be complicated to just be explained by "lol europoors had agriculture first".

>>3130083
It's shit. The whole thing from cover to cover is invalidated by this simple fact: Niggers are retarded.

Why do we literally have the same exact thread about this every fucking week?

>>3130661
It confuses and infuriates the /pol/ white trash, take >>>3130607 for example

>>3130555
That's not at all what the books says and if you had read it you'd know.

>>3130204
>Asking /lit/ about non-fiction
Never a good idea, anon. Read it.

>>3130446
>>3130470
>>3130203
I might be falling for low-quality bait, but there is a difference between taming something and domesticating it... a really big difference.

The colonists tried and failed to domesticate the animals, thinking that the native Africans couldn't do it because they were an inferior race.

http://www.thomsonsafaris.com/blog/taming-zebras-domestication-attempts/

>>3130733
The first humans migrating through the middle east and central asia didn't come across doey eyed horses, cows, sheep and goats that ate grass out of their hand. They were primeval beasts, giant aurochs that impaled you through the butthole if you got too close and shit.

>>3130801
If you're right that the ancestors of farm animals were all violent megafaunae that were somehow domesticated by proto-homo sapiens, then a lot can be said for the tenacity of the humble zebra in its resistance to the Victorian man.

>>3130733
>>3130892
You mean how the Victorian man could spend a few shekels and get an already broken horse so taming Zebras was at best a hobby and not something that a colonist would ever do seriously since they had more important things to do and already had tamed animals.

>>3132171
>What is domestication? I can't tell the difference between domestication and taming.
look it up and read the article.

The Victorians actually tried very hard to domesticate the zebra because it was immune to African diseases which killed off horses very quickly. There was an economic incentive to do it.

>>3130083
alt history.

I've monitored all the threads about this book and the conclusion I've reached is that whoever bashes this book has only picked a couple of quotes and made them as they were anti-white or something which triggers the racists of /pol/. No real arguments have been made against the book itself

>>3130446
domesticating =/= taming

I got a copy of this book. Is it even worth reading considering even the right, the left, and the academics bash it?

Most criticisms I've seen of it are kind of nitpicky and don't really focus on arguing against the central thesis and substance. I once saw someone write multiple pages of criticism of it on the basis of how its portrayal of Pizarro's conquest was historically inaccurate, and conclude the book was shit on that basis.

>>3135157
>Is it even worth reading considering even the right, the left, and the academics bash it?

The """""""right"""""" and """""""left's"""""""" criticisms of an academic work that they are not experts in, are completely irrelevant. Who the fuck cares what a /pol/ack's opinion of environmental determinism is?

Academics don't "bash" it, it's actually been well received by them. The academic criticism that has been brought against it is mainly what you would expect, where certain individual think he oversells environmental determinism and did not emphasise cultural factors enough.

>>3130083
Negro excuses. The book contradicts its entire premise.

>>3130688

The reality of Africa debunks most of it. The fact that your think pol is everywhere also showed your political bias.

>>3130083

Disgusting White Supremacist garbage. Diamond is a neonazi whose views are laughably ahistorical and racist.

>>3133869
>Muh pol
If you're only argument is "racism bad" you're the one who needs a history lesson. Racism is reality and what this book tried and fails to disprove it. Especially with the Africa revisionism.

>>3130109
It's humanities

Don't tell me what to think but explain to me what the book says for someone who hasn't read it

>>3138739

This book tries nothing of the sort. Diamond is a white supremacist who uses his """book""" to excuse white hegemony and to claim that it is "inevitable" that whites should dominate the world.

>>3138763

The book claims that white supremacy is natural and inevitable.

>>3138763
The core premise is that the reasons for the modern political landscape was the distribution of resources around the different contients, i.e "Native americans weren't able to develop as much as they didn't have as many domesticatable animals, which you need to create a more complex society" sort of thing, basically it makes the arguments that the deck was stacked in those on top's favour.

>>3138779
It is.
White supremacy should be protected and encouraged.

>>3138772
We already do and because of that everyone's quality of life is higher than it has ever been in history.

>>3138788
Which is why people people think it's nonsense because the places with the most abundance of resources are the least developed. iE Africa and the low iq nogs.