I've read it, and his theory represents a contorted, complex, sometimes self-contradictory attempt to present an 'alternative' explanation of the disparate results of Western civilization versus 'other cultures'. My review: nice try but not convincing.
Well, I swore I wasn't going to post again in this thread, but this just demands it. Let me summarize Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, which I read and laughed at all the way through:
"Luck determines everything. Human effort, work, and willpower mean nothing. European civilization flourished into the Western culture of today because Europeans were so lucky. Africans remained mired in backward hunting and gathering because they were unlucky. It had nothing to do with the people in any way, it was all the work of some mystical, unquantifiable, invisible thing called luck. Some people are lucky, and some are just unlucky. That's why we're all equal."
This is an infantile, submissive worldview perpetrated by someone who wants the world to be a nursery and refuses to take reponsibility for their failings. "Oooh, it wasn't my fault I didn't get that job, I was just UNLUCKY!" "Oooh, I can't figure out it's better to plant a field than to eat bark off a tree, how UNLUCKY!" What nonsense. If Jared Diamond is being used as a refutation of what I said, then I know I'm onto something.
"Racist" is the modern-day version of "heretic". People shriek it when they see something they don't want to have to deal with or think about that contradicts their worldview. Like "heretic", it is a peculiar, intractable, unprovable one-word slander that has come to mean essentially nothing. Galileo was a heretic, you know. He was also right.
I'll go back to lurking now. I'm a bit saddened there haven't been more fundamentalists drawn to this thread, their foaming at the mouth is always interesting to watch.