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.
I read it in high school for an assignment. It has its problems but it's worth reading.
I believe (IIRC) it does advance a very thought-provoking argument that the very lack of sanitation and proliferation of domesticated livestock in the backwater of Europe's cities was what made Europe a petri dish of disease; in stark contrast to the highly advanced sanitation of indigenous Meso- and South American cities that were also densely populated on a scale dwarfing the cities of Europe, on continents that greatly lacked domesticable livestock. In turn, the European conquistadors brought diseases that they were resistant or immune to but spread through the indigenous American peoples like a wildfire.
The book conveniently leaves out that the "germs" were intentionally spread and heavily implies that the death was just a natural accident of human progress and not the literal genocide it was.