Guns, Germs, and Steel

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Continuing my exploration of non computer and non science fiction books, I picked up [Guns, Germs, and Steel](/cgi-global/amazonbounce.pl?isbn=0393317552&assoc=gothmogstolkiena).  I had heard good things about the book and heck, a Pulitzer Prize still means something.  The book seeks to answer what seems at first a simple question: what factors led to the domination of the world by certain societies and not others.  This deceptively simple question has been answered over the years by a large variety of xenophobes and chauvinists by saying that the people of western europe are somehow inherently better than the rest of the world.  Jared Diamond takes on this question and provides a far more thorough and accurate answer that shows that no people have an inherent advantage over any other but they may have different resources to work with.

This definitely isn't a book to just breeze through, it took me several weeks to read and usually had to be consumed in small doses.  But it was very interesting and I feel better for having read it.