> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 10:37 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:
>
>> Books remaindered in their home countries often turn up in China at
>>> reasonable
>>> prices. One I liked was "Guns, Germs and Steel", a broad overview on
>>> differences in societies with a 10,000+ year perspective.
>>>
>>
>> I got that for R a few years ago and ended up reading it myself. It was
>> quite good. I've wondered about his other stuff... But someone remind me,
>> didn't he come up against some criticism recently. I think I read some
>> controversy in Atlantic Monthly or Harper's where he was caught out fudging
>> the data or some of his informants said that he was misrepresenting them or
>> something? Anyone know more about the upshot of the controversy?
>>
>
> When I read the book, it really set my teeth on edge, determinist
> hyper-realism... How to take Nature (capital N) TOO seriously. Later, I
> found a superior and detailed distillation of my reactions here:
> http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/jim-blaut-on-jared-diamond/
>
> Alan
>
>
Another reader/participant here pointed to Comment #9 - on the link above -
by "patello" as quite worthy of a read (my apologies for the scare quotes).