I read a portion of this in college and I remember not being too fond of it, and I've just sort of heard it's not a good book, sorta racist and eurocentric. I'm wondering what the real criticisms of this book are though since looking at a summary its seems sort of materialist?
Mostly wondering since my dad, who has not read a book since probably 1973, is getting a copy from the library and I want to know what chud shit I'm gonna have to deal with at the dinner table for the next couple months.
Jared Diamond's mission is the book is to dispel that Europe and its settler-states became hegemonic due to any inherent qualities of white people. While Diamond debunks some racist myths, he replaces them with a new "just-so" story about geography and ecology that really doesn't have that much explanatory power. That geographical determinism also serves to absolve the settler-states of their crimes by portraying it as a given that Europeans would plunder the western hemisphere.