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Thanks for the recommendation! Plagues have definitely had an important impact on the river of history. Is there any particular reason to read Plagues and Peop
by james_s_tayler 8y ago
Thanks for the recommendation! Plagues have definitely had an important impact on the river of history.
Is there any particular reason to read Plagues and Peoples instead of Guns, Germs and Steel rather than in addition to?
- UncleMeat 8y agoGGS isn't super well respected by historians. Diamond ignores a bunch of conflicting data when presenting his grand theory. It also presupposes a lot about how cultures "win". It's not a bad book but if you aren't careful it is easy to take it to mean more than it does.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoYeah, that's my impression of it too. I included it because it's very well known and given a lot of people have read it, if it's the only book of that nature that they have read I want to understand what their mental models or their intuitions are regarding how this stuff works.
- Fomite 8y agoPlagues and Peoples is the more scholarly of the two, and after it GGS is kinda...redundant.