Earlier quoted context omitted.
> writers who are way out of their depths and horribly wrong about what they are writing (e.g., Jared Diamond). Could you elaborate a bit? Myself I found his books quite compelling. I'm of course not an anthropologist, historian etc. so I may be missing something big.
The biggest issue with Diamond is that he's just wrong a lot of the time. This is especially so in Collapse , where virtually every single case study he talks about is something where consensus opinion is that environmental degradation played at best a minor role. As for Guns, Germs, and Steel itself, it's not quite as bad as Collapse , but it does have issues. The underlying thesis--of geographical determinism--just…
Thanks for the reply.
Indeed I heard there was criticism of his Easter Island case in Collapse, but not that all the examples were wrong.