Sunday May 29, 2005

Guns, Germs, and Steel

I just finished reading Gun's, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I highly recommend it. "This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years" That's The first sentence of the preface to the paperback edition. That in and of itself would make the book interesting to me. I have always wondered about world history beyond the caucasian history that I learned in school.

But beyond the history, the book attempts to develop some possible answers to the the big questions " Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than some other way? For instance, why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?" Guns, Germs, and Steel is a very easy to read book and it is the kind of compelling non fiction that engages me. Each chapter starts with questions like Why did only some societies domesticate plants and animals and become farmers? Why did Europeans germs wipe out Native Americans rather than Native Americans germs wipe out the Europeans? Diamond's suggested answers are fascinating.

Diamond's arguments stimulated me to think about other topics too. When he explored why the same society is not equally receptive to all inventions it made me think about why my friend Joe Reinhard's gyroplane which as I understand it is a superior technology is not in production today.

When he talked about the development of writing and how "ancient writing's main function was to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings." It got me thinking about the ways that modern technologies could be used in a similar way.

I think I will eventually read Diamond's most recent book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. But the next book on my list to read is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.