December 30, 2006

Book 58: Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond

If there is one thing I must say about this book, it's that it definitely does not live up to its title. Looking at the title, and even at the recommendations on the back, one would assume that this book would be a fantastic flight throughout human history, examining why things evolved as they did and exploring the meaning of these patterns. The book does do these things, to a certain extent, but by the time the reader figures out what is going on the book becomes far too cumbersome to be truly enjoyable.

Diamond's prose itself isn't horrible, which I appreciate, having read many a bad history. His sentences tend to ramble on for a bit too long, and he refers to his own book too many times (and is also a little overzealous in his usage of the colloquial "I"), but he is definitely readable on a basic level. It is with his thesis and his exploration thereof that I find major problems that end up making the book mediocre. First of all, Diamond clearly states his objective in his prologue, restating his thesis about every chapter or so. He is infinitely clear where he wants the book to go. Getting it there, however, is quite a different matter.

Diamond's chapters are interesting, but they lack sufficient transitions. Often different parts of the book are patched together by the continual (and annoying) refrain of the (mostly irrelevant) theme of the development of guns, germs, and steel. This theme itself goes largely untreated throughout the text, which I would consider instead a study of cross-continental differences and their implications in the rise of human societies. This is very distinct from the story of societies' fates, which is what is promised in the title. Indeed, Diamond's chapter on a major European-American meeting (Pizarro and the Incan empire) is sorely misplaced too early in the book, jumbling the necessary sequential treatment of history. This and many other chapters seem to be randomly placed to become neat thematic bundles, rather than relevant thematic or chronological groupings that would help support the thesis Diamond proposes.

In addition to these errors of placement and flow, Diamond's original epilogue, tauting the prestige of history as a science, belongs at the beginning of the book, not the end. By the end of the book, Diamond is once again repeating himself and his merits ad nauseum to an audience that has been held captive too long to his irrelevant narcissism. Here, instead, is his thesis, which he does manage to somewhat prove in the book: human history can be dealt with as a science, much like evolutionary biology. Were that the stated interest and point of the book, I think I would have held it in higher regard.

Diamond's book isn't horrible, but it is somewhat boring and it seems awfully irrelevant. He requires too much on the part of the reader when it comes to piecing together the elements of his proof into a condensed and digestible argument. This argument isn't a poor one but is poorly written and approached too indirectly to be truly groundbreaking. With a little more focus and more editiorial work, this could have been a great book, but as it stands it is a mediocre look at a fascinating problem. It invites further curiosity but the journey required to get there may be too much for many readers to bear.

Grade: B-

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