“Guns, Germs & Steel” was one of only 3 books in my entire life that I couldn’t finish. It’s that bad. Here’s the synopsis: In the opening chapter he clearly states That he believes the 5’ tall Stone Age Pygmies of Papua New Guinea are more intelligent than Europeans. His rationale? He hung out with them and felt like it because they knew all the types of plants, and also their kids didn’t have TVs (I’m not kidding). He also observed that unlike Europeans, they were constantly hacking each other to death with crude instruments. Which leads him to believe that they evolved to be smarter, because you need intelligence to survive permanent tribal warfare. Unlike cooperative farming. I really wish I was kidding about this. He concludes therefore that any and all modern differences in technology and wealth are the result strictly of environmental factors. He spends the next 400 pages desperately cooking up insanely convoluted theories about why living in a food scarce frozen wasteland actually gives people far more free time to invent things than eating an inexhaustible supply of bananas on a tropical island would. Now I’m a based millennial, I’ve built a fairly thick skin against “college guy” hunter gatherer fetishism. I was born into it, molded by it. I rose out of it like Bane from the pit of darkness. I can listen to Dr.Sternberg do a 60 minute lecture on why potions made from boiling albino babies are every bit as advanced as penicillin, I wouldn’t even feel a thing. I still couldn’t finish this book… Unlike Malcolm Galdwell, he didn’t even bother to make his slop fun to read. That’s honestly the most offensive part. If you’re not going to tell the truth, at least tell a fucking joke.