Have been doing a bit work-related traveling lately and picked up the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond during one of the long waits at the airport. The UCLA professor attempts to explain in this book the reason why different peoples (i.e., different races) followed different developmental paths over the course of tens of thousands of years. His conclusion is that it had to do with the biogeography of the continents, and the unstated implication was that any biological differences (i.e. difference in intelligence, if any at all) among the several human races were not the root cause of the divergent developmental paths these races took.

It’s one of the “big-name” books I’ve been wanting to read for a while but never got around to. Now that I’ve finally read it, I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it’s well written and carefully argued and a pleasure to read, but on the other hand it has this flavor of being so “politically correct” when it comes to racial differences that the arguments seem not entirely convincing.

In any event it’s some fun in-flight reading material, much more interesting that the “herewith,” “hereinafter,” and “including without limitation” I’ve had to read otherwise.