I was going to give this book five stars until I read the "Afterward," published in 2003, six years after the book's original printing. The entire premise of Diamond's work is that the randomness of geography determined the presence of certain types of plants, animals, and topographically configurations, which together in turn highly determined how different societies developed around the globe. It's a fascinating, informative, extremely compelling argument and piece of analysis.

However, Diamond should have stopped there and not let the messages from Bill Gates and business consultants convince him to apply this type of frame to business and government organization, without first understanding the assumptions embedded in their views. Those assumptions are revealed most clearly by Diamond's surprise that German beer production is not industrialized the way it is in the U.S., nor is Japanese food production. This is surprising, since he begins the discussion of those examples describing how he and his wife bring back German beer in their suitcases because they are so delicious. Somehow he can't make the leap between small scale production and unique, delicious beer. Similarly, he talks about the Japanese hyper focus on "fresh food," presumably in contrast to industrially commoditized food, as though wanting fresh, nutritious, high quality food is a poor choice. This window into his approach to these questions make it clear that I will not be reading any of his other books.

So read this one, but skip the Afterward.
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This was a very interesting read (for about the first 2/3 of its length). The author does a good job of explaining and making the reader think more deeply about how geography, environment, biology, sociology, politics and language all work together to influence technology and what most of us regard as progress. I gained new insights into the origins of farming, writing, disease and government and how and why they might have been unevenly distributed throughout the world.

I share the same concern as others that the writing does get a bit repetitive. This seems to be a common shortcoming of academics writing for a wider audience. They need to realize that their readers might not be researchers in their field, but we're still pretty smart and can pick up on themes and ideas without having them pounded into our skulls with a mallet.

Even so, I do recommend this book. Read the good parts. Skim the boring bits. Think about the complexity of the world. ( )

Great information, but it can be very dry. I think I'm used to more narrative. This is more like a textbook. ( )

Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book seeks to answer the question of why some cultures evolved into world powers with the means to survive and conquer —guns, germs, and steel — while other cultures did not. He answers the question quite succinctly with the dry and somewhat repetitive nature of a thesis paper, but I found the topic fascinating enough that I didn’t care so much about the presentation. (I listened to the audio at about 1.4x normal speed which may have helped.) Overall, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a bit boring, but the subject matter overcame the dry style. ( )

I really thought I'd read this, but it turns out I'd only read excerpts.