|
|
|
Guns, Germs and Steel
Jared Diamond
|
|
|
Guns, Germs and Steel
Jared Diamond
"The book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, I found out about, actually very happenstance. I happened to be taking care of my sick grandma, and I had finished my other book, White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, and didn't have a book, and she was part of a Book of the Month Club and happened to have received it. It's really about how civilizations came to be, and I've really liked it, because it's not just about how civilizations came to be full stop, it's about the ways in which civilizations tend to grow, and why some of them may succeed, while others of them don't succeed as well.
I liked that it opened me up to new aspects of history that I wasn't really clear on. It is very accessible. At no point did I feel like I didn't know enough about history, or I didn't understand enough about science that it was unclear to me. I mean, I think that's largely a testament to why it was given the Pulitzer Prize. It's because it's entirely accessible to all populations. I would assume the type of reader that would really enjoy it is obviously someone like me that tends to be really interested in, sort of, larger themes and issues, to be curious about how things came to be. I would also say it's a good prelude to his second book, Collapse, because they sort of bookend one another.
I would give it five stars as a type of book, for me. I think it was fantastic. Like I said, it was not only accessible; it was a surprise for me. I hadn't necessarily insisted on reading it, but it was given to me as an opportunity, and I've learned so much from it."
|
|
RSS feed 
