/lit/ - Literature

It's pretty speculative in many points.

>>4148127
Award for most useless post goes to.....

>>4148126

I hope you mean the book and not the video version.

I overall enjoyed Jared Diamond's take on "a history of humanity", but he falls flat on some parts in which he gets either too vague or too complex. The parts regarding animal domestication and the invention of agriculture are two parts that I wholly did not enjoy; Diamond changes focus during these parts to a biological history of humanity instead of a historical history of humanity (as dumb as that sounds) and it really messes with the tone of his book.

In the end, it's good as far as pop-history books go, and it will give you a pretty decent foundation from which you can build further your education of human history. I wouldn't use this book as a sole source of knowledge on human history, but it's a good supplement. Overall, I'd recommend reading it.

Very good, by no means a definitive guide but good for answering the big questions like: Why white people conquer everything? Why did ithey have guns germs and steel.

>>4148126
Jared Diamond is the king of conjecture. His points about disease resistance winning wars is absolutely true, and I believe he makes a point about superior sanitation practices in the east allowing denser cities and larger conquests, and hence, more stable kingdoms in feudal china and japan as well.

But he doesn't know DICK about genetics or economy, which are a pretty fucking major part of the development of civilizations.

Guns germs and steel is a very thought provoking "hey, we probably overlooked this..." type of book, but far, far, from even touching the most basic aspects of societal development. He should NOT be your first read, if you're serious about history, ancient economy, or warfare.

>>4148155

THIS

Thank you for summing it up so brilliantly. "the king of conjecture" I'm stealing that next time someone asks me about Diamond.

Fucking Diamond and his biologist bullshit. The part about the Incas and the conquistadores was pretty great though.

>>4148131
...you

I don't like how he goes around saying race is a social construct and should be ignored, then he harps on about how Jews are a race and there are jewish genes etc...

Could he be anymore obvious?


"In his Discover article of 1994, Diamond condemned the classification of humans into different races because it "shapes our views of other peoples, fosters our subconscious differentiation between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and is invoked to justify political and socioeconomic discrimination.”28 These are precisely the dynamics of the Israeli-Zionist policy that Diamond gave his tacit assent to in his Natural History article of 1993. Knowing if someone possesses “Jewish genes” helps to differentiate between “us” (Jews) and “them” (non-Jews), and can be invoked to “justify” the discriminatory practice of refusing to allow those who lack “Jewish genes” to join the Zionist state."

>>4148135
> Diamond changes focus during these parts to a biological history of humanity instead of a historical history of humanity (as dumb as that sounds) and it really messes with the tone of his book.

IIRC, i think that is because he is a Botanist (or plant researcher or some shit) first, and a historical author second.

>>4148179

I agree. He gets so carried away with the concept of domesticable animals and cereal grains that he loses track of his own argument, and ends up making baseless assumptions on what makes certain animals "domesticable" and what makes certain plants "farmable". I mean the zebra part is a total ass-pull.

it's a mostly symptomatic attempt at trying to rationalize "the way things are." obviously it's reductive but that doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.

>He should NOT be your first read, if you're serious about history, ancient economy, or warfare.

Who should be?

>>4148187

>inb4 Zinn

The Greek Classics. Not just the epic poetry, but everything from that era. From there, you can branch off into all the liberal revisionist bullshit history theory you want.

>>4148195
>2013
>still jerking off to ancient sodomites as a supreme source of all knowledge
k

>>4148202

What would you suggest as a logical historical foundation, then?

>>4148135
where do technical history papers/books get published?
where do historians learn all of the really technical specific shit?

>>4148226
A college textbook.

>>4148126
>GG&S
pants on head retarded, read Why Nations Fail instead

>>4148175
Please go back to /pol/. You aren't wanted here.

>>4148226
For what, all of human history? The existing "grand surveys" are all kinda meh. Durant is old as shit and was never Gibbon-tier or anything.

Jared Diamond is one step above a total hack. He's not a real anthropologist, and his works are pretty much neo-colonialist apologetics.

Don't start with him. Please.

I never understood why people shit on him so much, especially since I rarely see factual rebuttals of his main claims. It's perfectly possible that he went fuckin' nuts and extrapolated a billion consequences and a whole narrative of human history based on two or three plausible axioms, but hey that's not THAT bad, if read properly.

Not that I agree with him entirely. I do like his stuff on crop and animal swapping, since from what I know of prehistory those were incredibly vital to the growth of early civilisations in bountiful areas, quickly spreading the "toolkit" for urban-agrarian civilisation from the different regions of the Near East, to Egypt and the Indus, all the way to China. I have no problem believing seemingly minor geographical or environmental barriers could/did kibosh this whole process. But I rarely see factual arguments against this, people just say he's not a real/accredited anthropologist etc.

>>4148316
He wrote a book about a tribe and they demanded an apology because he misrepresented them as backwards dumbfucks begging for Americans and Europeans to come save them from their savage ways.

As I recall, there was a book that I saw someone here claim was better, but I can't remember the name. Something something and carnage?

Also, read the wikipedia article for some rebuttals and clarification on his mistakes.

jared diamond is two faced.

on one hand he wants to push the liberal zionist agenda that race is a social construct, on the other he supports the "jewish" race and research into jewish genetic uniqueness lol

>>4148296
>Durant is old as shit

so what? so are the "classics".
even if they aren't up to date, they're entertaining and will provide the basics for someone with a cursory interest in history (read: not history majors or autists)

so fuck off with your whack criticism of based Durant.

>>4148135
>pop-history

you have to be fucking kidding me. A history book is a history book. I understand pop-sci because it encourages readers to bypass equations and math. But what do you want them to do? Do we need to fly to Washington to study the Declaration of independence? Do i really need to interview a war vet to study d-day? fuck off.

>>4148126
It's the same thing to anthropology as Pop Sci is to sciences

>>4148735
You could compare and contrast people like Niall Ferguson and Anthony Beevor, two prominent modern day historians, to understand that even in the field of history there are those who try to appeal to masses and sensation.

> Do I really need to interview a war vet
If you want to get a primary source, instead learn what someone else learned.

I really wanted to read this book because I've always wondered, like the author in this book puts it, "why did white people ended up with so much cargo?".

However I was put off by the bullshit from the very beginning. Near the beginning he asserts that biology can't account for the different achievements of different civilizations. Then he turns around and claims children of Panua New Guinea are inherently smarter than European children because their environment requires them to be so, or they would just die.

Welp, which is it, mister Diamond?

>>4148772
what?
>biology
>environment requires
those two statements do not conflict

>>4148735
>I understand pop-sci because it encourages readers to bypass equations and math
Yeah, and pop history generally bypasses primary sources and often most or all of the footnotes.

>>4148171
...fucking

>>4148972
...niggers.

>>4148740
I don't know much about the hard sciences aside from what I've learned in introductory classes, and I don't really read pop sci. But don't pop sci authors at least have credentials? Jared Diamond isn't even an autodidact. He's a fucking botanist who started studying people without any regard for procedure, injecting his own biases everywhere, not knowing or not caring that he does it, and just generally shitting all over the very idea of anthropology while claiming to be an anthropologist himself, with a straight face.

>>4148226
lol, see >>4148277

For more specifics, A History of World Societies is probably the best introduction to world history. It's extremely cursory and intended as a jumping off point. At the end of each chapter is a suggested reading list which allows you to do so.

>>4150402
>He's a fucking botanist

I recall that he isn't even that.

I'd argue that his most important credential is not having a foreskin.

>>4151280

>>4148126
>but what are your thoughts on this?
It's pretty crap.

Read 1491 and 1493 instead.

>>4148126
>>4151295
It's garbage.

He tries to handwave away racial differences as inequity of geospatial opportunity - evertything is explained by availability of large docile mammals to herd, an east west axis and non-variable climate.

He seriously tries to claim that New Guinea Highlanders (read: headhunters) are as inventive as the Europeans or Asians.

All of his hand-waving doesn't explain at all the failure of these cultures to thrive when modernity gifts them technology which they could innovate further upon or refine (ala Japan/SK/HK).

>>4151317
If you'd read your history more widely you would have noticed how advanced those three asian cultures were and how much social infrastructure they already had in place that allowed them to exploit new technologies. You also ignore the effects that central government allowed by certain types of geospatial advantage (the arable fields of ancient italy vs. impenitrable forest of Germany) have on the spread of technology.

>>4148279
care to elaborate on that?

>>4151330
If you'd used your spellcheck, you would have noticed how easy it is to spell the word 'impenetrable' by just thinking of the origin of the word 'penetrate,' and then moving forward with the normal rules of English.

>>4151357
M80, I love retard roast as much as you do, but come on now:

> normal
> rules
> English

>>4148296
>Durant is old as shit

Nice argument.

>>4151377
>East German vs. West Germany
>North Korea vs. South Korea
>South of US vs. Mexico

Huge differences but same geography.

>>4151291
I [chuckled internally]

>>4148135
>and not the video version.
And what the hell is that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_and_poverty_of_nations

Has anybody read this bad boy? Fuck J. Diamond.