What a wonderful book this is. I watched the documentary series many years ago and had always intended to read the book on which it was based. Finally I picked it up for a dollar at our local charity book festival.

The book was amazing, so much deeper than the documentaries. So many things which were illuminating to understand, the spread of agriculture, of language, of writing, of modern humans, of so many things which are part of our global civilisation, are outlined in this book.

One of the things which vexed me a little was that he repeatedly says things to the effect of "Why did x invent something rather than y" or "Why did x invade y rather than the other way around". I mean repeatedly. Repeatedly. Still, I understood it, he is trying to refute what he sees as a racist and poorly informed view of history. That because one group of people come to dominate another group of people technically, culturally etc, is it must be the product of superior intelligence. Diamond makes the compelling case that the differences are the product of having certain environmental, geographical and cultural advantages. As someone who has never entertained the thought that one group of humans was intellectually inferior to others, especially in a way that is morally relevant, it wasn't necessarily a case that needed to be made to me, but the rigour and entertaining way the case was made was highly compelling. 

You will enjoy this book, you will be amazed by the scope of understanding in it, and you will talk about it to friends, family and random strangers.

My main problem in reading the book was that I had read something about how it was flawed in its conclusions, but I couldn't remember what the flaw was.  I read it quite sceptically but nothing really jumped out at me as being controversial. Thus now I need to try to find some criticisms of the book, but I guess that is good practise anyway and I'm sure I'll learn from them as well.