The
best and
worst thing about this book is that every
chapter is written in such a way that it stands on its own, without requiring the reader to skip to other parts of the book. Indeed, many of the chapters were originally
articles in various
popular science magazines. This is good if you want to come back to the book for
reference after reading it, but it can get
annoying if you read it straight through, as you read for the
Nth time about why some forms of
grain were more
domesticable than others. In fact, I ended up skimming over the final five chapters, in which Diamond's
theories are examined in
real-world examples, because they were almost entirely
restatements of the book's central theses.
If you want a good laugh, and you want to exercise your bullshit detection muscles, look this book up on Amazon.com and wade through all the reviews given by irate racists whose worldview is belittled by this book.