Evan's Blog. Meh.

tanya77:

wwnorton:

On the Opinion page of the New York Times, Jared Diamond corrects a misreading of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel:

It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney described it in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”

That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it. My focus was mostly on biological features, like plant and animal species, and among physical characteristics, the ones I mentioned were continents’ sizes and shapes and relative isolation. I said nothing about iron ore, which is so widespread that its distribution has had little effect on the different successes of different peoples.

[Continue reading on NYTimes.com]

Snap. (This is a good book. Really interesting.)

Great book.  Romney did NOT read it, clearly.