Every once in a while, and all too seldom, I come across an book that takes me to a new vantage of understanding. Maybe it opens up a new field of knowledge I’d never discovered. Maybe it answers a question that I’d been unable to answer on my own. But these books are real gems, the sorts of things that I mull over and chew on because there are so many good and useful ideas inside.<\/p>\n
Guns, Germs and Steel<\/em> is one of those kind of books. In this case, it answered a question that I’d been wondering for a long time. I’d phrased it like this, “What is up with Africa?”<\/p>\n Africa seems to be perennially fucked. They seem to be cyclically starving to death, they seem to have massively corrupt and uncaring goverments. They always need water and medicine.<\/p>\n Other places don’t seem to be starving to death all the time. Why Africa? What’s the real roots of the problem?<\/p>\n GG&S deals with that. And they deal with an even bigger issue: why the peoples from some areas conquered other peoples in different areas.<\/p>\n THAT is another question I wonder about.<\/p>\n Why did some peoples colonize and others BE colonized?<\/p>\n GG&S breaks it down into some really practical and understandable elements. To generalize: some people were better fed. And they were better fed because they had better food around.<\/p>\n Some PLACES had better food available than others. As enticing as it is to consider the people group to which I belong as superior, there are actually circumstantial and incidental reasons having to do with LOCATION that makes one group successful over another.<\/p>\n That’s a real, practical and effective argument against racism as well. Another advantage to reading this book!<\/p>\n It won a Pulitzer, as well it deserved. I would hope that this book would go on to be read by students and others for years and years to come.<\/p>\n To me, it was not hard to read. As technical as some of the subject matter became, the author made it very relevant to the reader.<\/p>\n Also, it gave me some new trains of thought about how to manage the future. We are all in this together, all of us humans from all over the world. We inter-relate a lot, and it would be best to understand the past so that we can make wise decisions about the future.<\/p>\n I can hardly stop talking about this book to all the people I know. It was very exciting to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every once in a while, and all too seldom, I come across an book that takes me to a new vantage of understanding. Maybe it opens up a new field of knowledge I’d never discovered. Maybe it answers a question … Continue reading