PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"... an ambitious, highly important book ... Before analyzing the deeper (and ultimately accidental) causes behind European domination, Mr. Diamond cleverly finesses the biological determinists with another tale of annihilation of one society at the hands of another ... In similar fashion, Mr. Diamond peels away the causes beneath the causes of other European cultural advantages, as if the humanized world were a gigantic onion and recorded history only its blighted surface. His multilayered analysis, however, should be consumed with a grain or two of salt. Its sheer depth compels him to wear the hats of anthropologist, archeologist, plant geneticist, epidemiologist and social, military and technological historian, as well as his own academic headgear. Mr. Diamond acknowledges that no single person can be an authority in all these fields, yet he mentions most of the other scholars who must have informed his ideas not in the text but only in an addendum. This makes for a smoother exposition, perhaps, but combined with the sometimes didactic style of the narrative, it imparts an unwarranted sense of objectivity, as if everything happened when, where and how in prehistory just as Jared Diamond says it did. Each of the disciplines into which he delves to further his argument is rife with uncertainties, differing interpretations and opposing viewpoints. A closer examination of them would have only strengthened an already formidable work.\
