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Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
by carterklein13 6y ago
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
- glaurung_ 6y agoI'd second this one!
- tootie 6y agoFYI that book is very poorly regarded by mainstream historians and anthropologists for being scientifically inaccurate.
- psalminen 6y agoSource? The Royal Society seemed to like it.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>FYI that book is very poorly regarded by mainstream historians and anthropologists for being scientifically inaccurate. That's a bit of a stretch. It isn't without (legitimate) criticism --as any work of this scope is-- but Diamond is mainstream, and the book has won several scientific awards and a lot of praise. The over-arching premise, that luck and circumstance played a huge role in the development of civilizations, isn't really disputed. And there are lessons in there for today: not everything you've earned is a product of your abilities.
- sradman 6y ago> by mainstream historians and anthropologists Indeed it is but mainstream historians and anthropologists are not the arbiters of good science. The criticisms, that I'm aware of, come down to incomplete research on Yali (not a critical aspect of the narrative and absent from The Third Chimpanzee) and an over-enthusiastic pre-emptive argument against a neo-darwinian interpretation of genetic data. I agree with carterklein13, Guns, Germs, and Steel is near the top of my list of influential books.
- psalminen 6y ago+1 for this recommendation. I'll add The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley. It's gems are a little metaphorical, but a great read nonetheless.