Guns Germs and Steel

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Recently finished reading this book by Jared Diamond. Its a must read for everyone who is fascinated by human history.

As a kid, I always hated history books and classes. Of course they used to be so boring and irrelevant to my life back then. But the very same history fascinates me, intrigues me now. Things that happened back then find more relevance in my life today. I try to apply the logic (derived from history) to everything around me. It helps me find answers to so many things that I was told to be "facts of life". For e.g. the hypothesis that intelligence is in your genes. But this book proved it wrong with the help of history. It gives a beautiful account of how environmental factors affected and moulded humans everywhere in the world. It dismisses racist theories of why europeans ended up dominating the rest of the world. As George Bernard Shaw once said: "Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough".

Highly recommended !

Comments

kage said…
hi Pallavi,

this has been on my to-do list for a while. I guess I'll get to it soon enough. Right now, I'm going through 4 different books :)

btw, hope all is well in Mumbai

cheers,
kage
November 27, 2008 at 7:47 AM
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