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.
GGS was my first exposure to a not-racist explanation for why Europeans came to dominate the world via colonialism - so to that end, I would say don't expect chud shit from your dad reading it, instead expect naive lib shit. As everyone else has pointed out Diamond constructs a grand view of history based around geographic determinism, which ends up downplaying both the acts of resistance by colonized people and the acts of repression by colonizers. Colonization wasn't an "oopsie we gave you a disease which collapsed your society but we might as well take this land nobody is using anymore", it was "we have and will continue killing you for your land and because of our massive support base back home you cannot stop us."