'white people ain't shit' is a pretty solid alternative title for this book.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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I read this book in college, of my own accord, and I didn't believe everything in it, at the time, and only I encountered criticisms of it much later.
Definitely an accessible entry into the idea of anthropology. For what it's worth. Probably better books out there.
I picked this up in a airport years ago. I agree it's probably not the best anthropology book (not that I've read a bunch of anthropology books). But it is a very easy book to understand and an easy read which many science books arguably are not. I think that alone makes this a valuable book because it easily delivers the concept of past environmental influence on the evolution of groups. It may not be perfect but it's readable for us normal non-sciency people and that gives us a fighting chance to ask ourselves some important questions about how we see the world.
People are too quick to shit on everything in GGaS because racists have completely misrepresented the central thesis. Namely there are quirks of geography, flora and fauna that facilitate rapid development of societies, not that there's anything inherent to the people in those societies that make them superior to any other.
Just in time to Rebecca Watson to dunk on it.
Just in time to hear her stretch 90 seconds of content into a full video. There's way more to complain about in GG&S, mostly in the "and where's your source for this" department.
She railed a lot on the "racists use this book" point, which has very little to do with the actual book.
If you want a not-shit version of this book, try "Energy and Civilization", by Vaclav Smil. It looks at some of the same points, but from a more practical energy-based approach.
Tl;dr: if you don't have (draft) animals to domesticate, your civilization is doomed to develop extremely slowly or stagnate.
That's a point also made in Guns Germs and Steel though, that book isn't all crap. Its mostly just the long/wide thing that's bullshit, and ignoring cultural differences.
Ah, yes, racism.
I had a high school history teacher who loved it. Which seems fitting.