Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1999, Paperback)

Weapons, viruses and metal equipment managed the leadership of the European-American concept -- up to the year of 2000. However while one still is rubbing his hands, that China was taken off since the 14th century (Arabia since 15th), the tide can oppose nevertheless soon. At present, the technology and trade development of the Asian countries is enormously positive and the oil-possessing dominance of the Arabian states just increases her demand to a global (also ideological) con-design right. The threat factors "weapons, viruses and metal equipment," -- represented always into actor pose nicely by president George W. Bush, impressed with fight bomber pilot jacket, with legs apart and broad grinning on the deck of an US-aircraft-carrier -- this success conception perhaps really could gradually oppose her inventors: State armies get for example increasingly powerless against the guerilla unit tactics of the present global suicidal terrorism. Jared Diamond perhaps looks a little confused for the stability guarantee of the European-American success concept. The geographical situation alone is not a guarantor. As an advantage factor it does not suffice eternally. Jared Diamond looks to make believe for us that the capability to make innovations, the courage to accept competition, the openness for intermixing (causes biologically seen virus resistance, hello, bird flu) -- that these factors will safeguard the further dominance of the European-American concept. He does not like to argue racialistly, religion critically or militaristically, although: The Indians of North- and South-America felt actually quite good without the missionaries and swords, railways and colts of the white ones; in addition, we do not see Diamond's remarks on drunken and lazy workers of non-white skin color (but some Afro-American reviewers do). [The factor "genocide" Jared Diamond does not examine, but in his follow-up book "Collapse" he analyzes how the Hutus murdered the Tutsis in Rwanda - avoiding the own nest soiling examples of how the American Indians lost their lives]. As an environmentalist, doubts come to the professor at the university of California , however, because of ruthless practices (so he worries in "Collapse" about some elks turned ill in Montana, toxins of a mine seeped into the ground there). Jared Diamond is uncertain and broods. We perhaps too.