Guns, Germs & Steel

"Why the West Rules for Now" by Ian Morris.
"Hot, Flat and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman.
"1491" and "1493" by Charles C Mann
"Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond +2
"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by French Thomas Piketty
"Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions"k by Dan Ariely
"The Capitalist World System" by Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Design Of Everyday Things by ?
Rising From The Plains by ?
Poor Economics by ?
"Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter +1(though i may have to veto this, as it doesn't quite fit the brief)

The art of war

If anyone is interested in the riveting biography of a young revolutionary founding a free and independent nation in the face of militant authoritarianism, I recommend Watership Down, by Richard Adams.

I am happy to re-read Guns, Germs and Steel. It's been many years since I first read it.

Guns Germs and Steel pairs very nicely with 1491 and 1493. Very well actually, I read

As a professional archaeologist, I second that Jared Diamond is a quack. Although, I do enjoy his big sweeping unscientific assertions, simply because he's tackling Euro-centricity.

I'm interested into hearing why he's a quack. When can we close the vote?

Eklade, you should really read 1491 and 1493. 1491 tries to piece together an image of the America's prior to first contact with the eastern world, Mann approaches the topic from a journalistic perspective really keeping the topic free of personal assertions and mainly just a compilation of expert theories and reasoning as well as his first person experience on archaeological digs. I haven't gotten to reading 1493 but it is suppose to focus on how Europeans affected american cultures.

CB, thanks for the suggestions. I've picked up one of those books on several occasions and never committed. Perhaps I will now with your positive recommendations.

Putin, in bad form I won't back up my opinion of Jared Diamond simply because I'm lazy. I implore you to research the subject yourself, but that being said I used to think that Diamond was the bee's knees until this guy set me straight:

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/28455702

Presumably because he's more commercial than academic, with a primary purpose to sell books, engaging wider readership in a more sweeping journalistic style, rather than contribute to academic knowledge with an erudite and painstakingly careful monograph.

This type of academic journalism is increasingly popular, earns universities and academics money, while extending (if, potentially, reductively) academic knowledge to a wider readership.

I hope this book club can expound upon it a bit more than just me reading old debates between anthropologists about GG&S. I'm a bit skeptical of critiques from fields who generally distrust any attempt to do big picture work because it's often simply a matter of them complaining about big picture work. I hope that's not what's going on here.

Putin, what is your take on environmental determinism?

By which I'm assuming you mean the idea that human phenomena can be explained using environmental factors (as opposed to cultural or historical or individual factors)? I think the environment/geography can explain quite a lot. Why?

Is the "quackery" accusation based on this notion that geography/environment has no role to play in explaining human societies?

Eklade, I second CB's recommendation of 1491. Absolutely fascinating look into pre-Columbian America (North and South), thinking about it is getting me motivated to re-read it (or 1493, which has been on my to-read list for a while).
To nominate another book on topic, I would suggest "The Miracle" by Michael Schuman. It tells about Asia's rise from post-WWII chaos to world economic power, breaking down how each country (Japan, Taiwan, etc.) found its own path to becoming a player on the global stage.

Knowing academia, it's probably a wave of "It's more complicated than that/that wasn't the first-order cause!" responses to various examples in the book. But then, neither of us actually knows the basis for the accusation as yet, so, might as well avoid preconceptions about it.

I recommend Paul Kennedy's - > The Rise and Fall of Great Powers and William McNeil's - > The Pursuit of Power. Both sweeping big picture works with academic heft and erudition to satisfy, I hope, critics of popular writing.

@genghiz, I found a place you can listen to the 1493 audiobook free. It's called playster, I just started a 90 day free trial and it has 1493 among other works.

Thanks for the info, CB. No doubt it would save me some time, I know that 1493 is a long one. Somehow it's not the same for me, doing the audiobooks or reading on a tablet or whatever. Afraid I'm too old school, something satisfying about turning those pages one at a time....

@Eklade: Basically what lethologica said. I've read a good few articles croticisong GGS and none of them dosagree that Jared basic analysis is correct. Merely his conclusions are unsupported by the evidence - is that he is a storyteller without academic merit.

Well guess what, all that shit you learned about physics and atoms in high schoOl? Bullshit, even the stories of the history of science and how one experiment disproved theory A and people realised they needed theory B.

It is a combination of 'lies to children' and the 'historical model' of science - useful approximations for getting the general idea across for a general audience.

I think Jared Diamond does a lot to bring together recent trends in world history to break Euro-centrism. But i don't expect it to be a academic quality piece of literature - it is pop science at best, and a series of interesting stories to help prep people for intro to numerous subjects... But i haven't read his work yet, so i don't know if it is any good, he must have done something right to have won the pulitzer prize, so i suspect it is a compelling story.

As an aside, i have been lead from Jared Diamond to hearing about (Ian Moris?) and the book 1177 (BCE) which is about the collapse of the 7/8ths late bronze age civilisations (with egypt going into a dark age but kinda surviving) cause by sea peoples - or probably not sea peoples.

Very unsatisfying read to hear the decent academic going 'yeah well it coul have been sea peoples, but nobody knows, and we have evdidence for earthquakes, and famine, and maybe internal conflict...'. Though he admits that the date he picked is a complete lies, and the colapse took between 1 and 2 hundred years. (Just like the fall of the roman empire didn't take place in the one year Rome was sacked)

1177 BCE is not Ian Moris, but rather E.H. Cline is the author.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10185.html

The Bronze Age collapse is one of the great mysteries of history. The idea of it being cause by Sea People's has been popular for a long time, but as yet, as far as I am aware no one knows.

Thanks, i wasn't sure, Moris actually tells a better story. Cline is ok, and probably has more facts; but unfortunately he seems to lack some of the charisma...

Still i much prefer his, "it was probably more than sea people" approach - but not at all his "perfect storm" solution.... Which seems to suggest, 'well they could have recovered from some bad stuff, so it must have been all the bad stuff at once'

Given the things you write about in the forum, orathaic, I reckon you might quite like The Great Courses (formerly the Teaching Company).

http://www.audible.com/mt/TGC?source_code=AUDOR96CBEM070113

I have deal where I get a course month for about $14 each (sometimes cheaper when they go on sale).. Presently I am listening to 'Americas In the Revolutionary Era' which is about the gaining of independence not just the United States but the whole of the Americas.

http://www.thegreatcourses.com.au/courses/americas-in-the-revolutionary-era.html

I like the audio format because I can go for run or to the gym and listen to them while exercising or doing chores etc.

The lectures are all professors at well-known universities. They're better than most of the lecturers I had at University.

This one is an excellent course about Capitalism (it doesn't promote any particular ideology it is just an intellectual history of capitalism.)

http://www.thegreatcourses.com.au/courses/thinking-about-capitalism.html

(You can get them on pirate bay too, which is what I used to do, but they but I find the Audible phone app too convenient to pass up).

I'd be interested in joining the book club, though there are some thick tomes being recommended. In keeping with the theme, I might add Timothy Mitchell's "Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity". I have only read an excerpt of it for class, but I found it to be very well written and quite interesting; I'd want to read the entire thing myself.

Now, in my understanding of book clubs, the members discuss the various elements of the books being read--things like plot, prose, characterisation, etc.

I'm wondering what exactly we'd be discussing in our examination of pop history/science/economics. While I haven't read the books on the list (save a few excerpts from Piketty), I gather that there are really two elements that we can talk about: plot (narrative, whatever) and methodology. I can't imagine it being a worthwhile discussion to critique Jared Diamond's use of metaphors or Piketty's verb tenses.

The problem I envision is that these dialogues will inevitably devolve into tiresome and lengthy attempts by university students to demonstrate their excitement at their studies and prove their worth as academics by searching high and low for alternative sources and critiques to reproduce in the forum. Worse still, I worry that the majority of participants will simply agree with the books and regurgitate what they have read in newspaper reviews or on Reddit. Perhaps there will be a couple of contrarians, but then the discussions will turn into dogpiling on the minority.

The main reason I predict such difficulties is that the books on the list discuss empirical matters. The trouble is that a criticism of an empirical book requires empirical proof; what's at stake is not the subjective meaning of the narrative or the characters, but ownership of the Truth. To criticise Morris, say, is to declare his facts false. Such a criticism would require some sort of side research (perhaps this critic has a JSTOR account and too much time on his hands), and a response to it would require yet more. Post lengths and reading lists grow longer as the arguments continue, but still no new insight has been added and the silent observers who lack the time and inclination to stroke their egos for an anonymous Internet audience become bored.

Maybe we'd be better off following Hazel-Rah's lead, reading works of fiction. Watership Down has more elements we can discuss and also a work to compare it to (The Aeneid). Rather than just looking at the plot, we can also talk about the characters, the style, etc. and we can draw parallels to Virgil's epic. The discussion of fiction can branch out from the "objective" truth, reaching into various people's subjective experiences and interpretations. To be quite honest, I can find critiques of Piketty from more respected academics than the people who post here; I'm more interested in how others react to Nabokov's Humbert Humbert or Kafka's K. These are discussion items that don't have empirically verifiable answers, and deferring to experts is much less fruitful here.

Aside from fiction, we can also talk about philosophy. Works by Kant and Hegel don't really have empirically verifiable answers, and there is plenty of discussion to be had on either side. I must admit, I am partial to Voltaire. Religious works too could make for wonderful discussion, though the worry again is that some people might steer the discussion towards whether or not God exists.

A more practical benefit to what I'm proposing is that I'd be more likely to find fiction titles on #Bookz than non-fiction titles, though I haven't tried looking for popsci.

Anyway, I suppose I'm in the minority, but I thought I'd share my thoughts.

@"The problem I envision is that these dialogues will inevitably devolve into tiresome and lengthy attempts by university students to demonstrate their excitement at their studies and prove their worth as academics by searching high and low for alternative sources and critiques to reproduce in the forum. Worse still, I worry that the majority of participants will simply agree with the books and regurgitate what they have read in newspaper reviews or on Reddit. Perhaps there will be a couple of contrarians, but then the discussions will turn into dogpiling on the minority. "

So let me take you through my thoughts, i was watching a Jared Diamond interview, and getting excited about GGS, when it occured to me that maybe it is not 100%, (maybe someone above said he was a Quack, but that was later) I realised that it would be more interesting to share the reading expierenve with those contratians (i hope Putin will live up to my expectations :)

It is not about dog-piling them, it is about learning more than the text can bring on its own by hearing different views. Sure a lot of it is empirical, but you can cherry-pick empirical facts (as Diamond has been accused of doing, by antropologists, historians and archaeologists) - the point being that reading it without this dissenting view is less complete.

As for your dire predictions, look at the discussions and debates we have on the forums, would having a book to focus our attention on make them better or worse?

(And don't get me wrong, if you want to invest time and energy in a fiction book club, go right ahead, it doesn't interest me. I'm happy enough reading fiction on my own)

@Spyman, oddly i think i prefer video (lectures from certain professors, i love it when the likes of Stanford put their best storytellers on youtube) or writing... I don't think i'd get through an audio book.

But thanks for the links!

"I realised that it would be more interesting to share the reading expierenve with those contratians (i hope Putin will live up to my expectations :)

It is not about dog-piling them, it is about learning more than the text can bring on its own by hearing different views. Sure a lot of it is empirical, but you can cherry-pick empirical facts (as Diamond has been accused of doing, by antropologists, historians and archaeologists) - the point being that reading it without this dissenting view is less complete."

I'm not sure what Putin's background is, but wouldn't you rather see a critique from more established academics? If you have access to a repository of academic works, I'm sure you can find something there.

Yes, it is possible to cherry-pick facts, but why would you want to read about what webDippers think should be included rather than, again, established academics? And how interesting could these discussions possibly get if all that webDippers will do is look for and cite other people (maybe established academics!) or speculate based on having taken introductory social science courses in their universities?

It seems to me that if you would like to learn about any empirical subject matter, you'd be better off looking for university syllabi than starting with Jared Diamond and delving further and deeper through critiques of him.

"As for your dire predictions, look at the discussions and debates we have on the forums, would having a book to focus our attention on make them better or worse?"

Better or worse depends on what one considers to be good and bad in a discussion or debate. I tend to think that arguments where each side has a lot of reference material (as is the case with popular non-fiction) are worse because they descend into regurgitation of what other (smarter) people have said. And let's be real, no focal point is going to raise the level of discourse here.