What is the worst history book to be accepted by academia

>Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist dr Diamond.

mine does too, but he's also pretty big radical leftist..so alot of what he says is ideologically based

It's not accepted by the academia.

On the contrary he is an excellent ornithologist. If I wanted to know about the birds of Papua New Guinea, Diamond is the guy I'd ask. His error was in writing outside his expertise, a mistake that has basically destroyed his reputation.

this book is

Someone tell me what it's about

What is accepted then?

Same for my professor. Really frustrates me, because all the students in my class agree with him. I grew up in a town where conservative bias was bad, but I find this opposite spectrum just as frustrating. People just want to hear good/bad/right/left assertions about the past rather than understanding how multifaceted it is.

What the hell kind of shitty college do you go to?

what's wrong with it

It's wrong about all its claims.

>geographical determinism
Why is it considered dead? Surely a large amount of a society's principles stem from geography, which is why certain peoples became naval or land powers and had influences on their religions.

Also, wouldn't the Mediterranean be a natural place for societies to succeed? They have the perfect climate to support large cities. You're not gonna get any Inuit city states. Also look at the Middle Eastern civilisations like the Babylonian Empire and Ancient Egypt, which were dependent on rivers sustaining their large populations

explain

It's only a gen-ed U.S. history class and the guy teaching it has his PhD regarding railroads or something.

>Why is it considered dead?

Cretinously simplistic.

What part of my post didn't you understand?

who is the worst historian with a degree, period?

No, it's literally anything written by Ian Cuckshaw and Paul Johnson.

This too.

John Green doesn't even have a degree in history

Lol

What is the matter with Ian Kershaw?

Well, now... you certainly put forth an excellent argument, what with your flat assertion and nothing to back up your claim. Bravo, sir. I am impressed.

He's an Anglo.

I dobut "geographical determinism is dead. Or rather geography definatly does play a part in the history of people but its only one point of view.
You cannot explain everything and anything. You always take a point of view and write down a certian narrative and causation line.

Not that tuy but If you actually want to know there's a lot of reviews out there discrediting the book you can read.

but it's not. I'm a history major and this book is never referenced in any major manual. I red it because it was an optional book in a optional program at uni, but it was never anything more than a theory, like all universalists

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_determinism

Stop spouting bullshit.
Veeky Forums the humanities and history disinformation board.

>Or rather geography definatly does play a part in the history of people but its only one point of view.

Exactly, this is why strict geographical determinism of the sort Diamond proposes is a dead idea.

So you link to an article that explains how geographical determinism is a dead theory to refute my claim that it's a dead theory? Kill yourself you waste of skin.

You read Gibbon as literature these days, not as history. Also this

A People's History of the United States

Das Kapital

Fucking this

I don't know whether this was embraced by academia but it was possibly the worst history book I've ever read in my life.

I think we can all agree that any history book written by an American is laughable.

The only "academia" that accepts that book is highschool teachers' boards. Historians, far and wide, have ripped it to shreds several times over.

Only the popculture meme historical books with typed out explosion noises, otherwise American historians aren't that bad.

What sucks utter cock is British historians though, all of them are like Lindybeige except without the obvious irony, shitting on the enemies of Britain nonstop while the rest of their books is hearsay, poor translations, virtue signaling and outright propaganda. A lot of historical common misconceptions especially regarding things like the Spanish empire or Austria-Hungary are the result of Anglo faggots having the stranglehold on the field of history literature.

gulag archipelago

>DUDE prison is bad, why can't it be a holiday?

Not very subtle, are you?

...

Perfidious nation
Perfidious historians

Why is the Spanish Inquisition considered the worst when there were worse religious persecutions elsewhere? Anglo don't like Spain
Why is Napoleon demonized and mocked for short? Anglo don't like Napoleon
A lot of history is propaganda, a lot of history is written by the Brits.

>how the Irish became white
I am officially triggered

I got half way through and enjoy it, I just like reading about history and shit for fun, stories interest me, this seems to have a few good ones. Is the hate purely because people disagree with his theory?

Anyone got an answer?

Yes.
Wouldn't you rather read something written by an actual historian?

test

I read history books more out of interest, hardly anyone on this board is a historian, however, they tell some pretty interesting stories. As long as he is not making shit up as he goes along i am alright reading what he has to say. I also suck at finding history books i enjoy, feels like a gamble every time i buy one.

stay mad x

It isn't. Almost every academic book review shits all over the book.

Your professor is retarded. Anthros fucking hate it.

It's not, everyone here is just a racist and butt hurt because it doesn't agree with them.
>dead in academia
lol no
>ornithologist.
He's a biologist.

Central topic is a question of why Europe conquered the world in colonial times while places like Africa and south America didn't conquer Europe.

He explains it in many different ways, mainly the various domestic animals and crops available to each region, and geographical locations allowing them to produce a more abundant civilization. For example, Europe had sheep, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, etc. basically every farm animal while the Americas had llamas and that's about it. Also being an east-west trader is a lot easier than a north-south trader which made commerce easier. There were many other factors just read the book. Hard to negate his view because he just hits you with point after point and argues against his would-be contractors.

reddit.com/r/badhistory/search?q=guns germs&restrict_sr=on

badhistory leans pretty left and considers it pretty garbo

>t. has never read an academic book review regarding GGS in their life
Surely you have access to an online journal database if you claim to know so much about how academia treats the book. Go and read for yourself. Also: Ornithologists are biologists. Diamond's specialty is ornithology.

A lot of leftists think it's racist actually, because it uses 19th century notions of European supremacy and superiority uncritically.

read A little history of the world by gombrich for a nicely laid out timeline of civilization
read a short history of nearly everything by bill bryson for a kind of insight into how each branch of science came to

these 2 and Guns germs and steel are all terrific books for a normal person, Guns germs and steel is by far the heaviest, gombrich is the best one

"ripped it to shreds" = insecurely whine at a far, far, FAR more successful and admired academic with vague incoherent criticism, laughable appeals to amateurish feel good philosophy like free-will over determinism, and the tried and true accusations of racisms

I do not know if it is accepted by academia or not, but Salassi's "Cataline" is the single worst book on an historical topic I have ever read. Assumes modern political motivations based on modern ideologies dictated behavior of Catalina, Cicero, et al, misreads or ignores ancient sources, and consistently makes errors of basic fact (such as confusing the meanings of patricians/plebeians with optimates/popularis.) It is the only book I have ever abandoned in mid-read.

It is a bad book, if for no other reason than it makes up "facts" that are asserted as true because the author wants it to be true, from the amazing wonderfulness of New Guinean society to the assumed unsuitability of many species of animal to be domesticated (some of which have since been successfully domesticated) to the implication that anybody who disagreed with his theories was probably a racist.

I read it as a "history of history," with a lot of value as information on how understanding and study of history has evolved. I have a "hobbyist" interest in the history of the Space Race, and read Oburg's "Red Star Rising"for the same reason--his look at what was "known" about the Soviet program in the west is fascinating as a study of how the US perceived and analyzed Soviet activities, even if much of what they thought they knew is now known to be incomplete or in error.

Not an argument faggot.

This drivel was actually accepted? I actually read it, it's a complete catastrophe of a book.

/this desu

What's so atrocious about it?

There's a good refutation tot his book by Scott Locklin.

>t. tankie
Fuck off, commie shit.

>I read this book some years ago, and provided many "aha" moments. Diamond's explanations are extremely compelling, even to someone with more than a passing education in history, geography and historiography. Of course, they are all a "just so" story, rather than an accurate representation of how things turned out. Geography *of course* is important in the historical development of different nations and civilizations. Is geography (along with associated factors of agricultural technology, domesticated animals and his pained explanation about why Europeans were better with guns than the Chinese who invented them) the only factor in why Western Civilization grew to dominate others? Of course it isn't. Europe had no unique access to these things: Asian civilizations had arguably superior such advantages. Victor Davis Hanson makes a similar "one factor" argument in his book "Carnage and Culture." Hanson's argument is that Westerners are simply better at war than other civilizations, because most Westerners were influenced by the Ancient Greeks, who developed a superior method of combat and of developing innovations than other nations did. Is Hanson's theory 100% the One True Answer? No, the rise of Japan and the invincibility of Mongol raiders rather puts his theory to fault, but it's at least as important as geography. There are all kinds of "one factor" arguments possible, all of which could make for as convincing a book as this one.

>Victorian historians thought it was the vigor of "nordic" civilizations which made Western world domination inevitable: also convincing if that was the only book you had read on that particular day, and also ultimately deeply silly (basically, this means the West dominates because it is dominant). Other Victorian historians made out human history to be the product of great battles, all of which had a huge element of random chance. Spengler also famously thought of civilizations as "cultural organisms" which eventually get old, become frail and die, just like any other organism whose telemeres have gotten shorter. I would imagine, like in, say, finance, the actual explanation for history is kind of complicated. I bet the Greek way of war has something to do with it, along with geography, culture, the Catholic Church, language and a whole lot of random chance. It's nice to think we know exactly why something happened, but a lot of what happens in the world, especially the world of human beings, is just plain random noise. Putting one factor explanations on history as Diamond does is not particularly helpful.

>There is also the matter of historical perspective. Diamond writes as if everything leading up to the present time of European world cultural domination were some kind of historical inevitability, and that *of course* -thus it will always be. This is the sheerest nonsense. At various times in human history, "Western Civilization" consisted of illiterate barbarians living in mud huts. In very recent times in human history (like, say, the 1930s), it kind of looked like that's where the West was heading again. Other civilizations culturally and physically eclipsed or dominated the West through history: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Islamic civilizations, Egyptian, Assyrian, Mongolian, Persian or Russian (if you count them as different, which I do) civilizations made Western civilization irrelevant through vast swathes of human history. Such civilizations may again eclipse Western civilization. Just to take one example, the Zoroastrian Persian civilization lasted longer than Rome, covered more territory and was in many ways more advanced: they even generally beat the Romans in warfare in the middle east. Why should I privilege the Romans over the Persians, just because some nations who were rather vaguely influenced by Rome now dominate the nations who were influenced by the Persians? I privilege them because they are my cultural ancestors, though in 1000 years, the poetry of Rumi may be more important than that of Martial.

>Finally, there are the matters of Diamond's historical veracity and bigotry. To address the second thing first, he seems to take a sort of perverse glee in making racial pronouncements to the detriment of "Western" people. According to Diamond, Western people are dirty, and have developed special immune systems; something I find hard to believe, and doubt is backed up by anything resembling statistical fact. Why wouldn't east Asians have developed superior immune systems? They lived in cities longer than the ancestors of most Westerners. Also, according to Diamond, he can tell that the average New Guinean is "on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive and more interested in things and people than the average European or American. (page 20, along with a tortured explanation of why Diamond's vacation perceptions are supposed to be superior to a century of psychometric research)" This is the sort of casual bigotry that used to inform Nordicist history about the dominance of the West, except somehow it becomes politically correct when pointed at Western people in modern times.

>Personally, I figure this just makes Diamond a garden variety modern bigot: a late 20th century version of a pith helmeted Kipling type who yammers on about "lesser breeds without the law." To make matters worse, he's also empirically wrong: New Guineans have an average IQ of around 85, wheras Europeans and Americans are closer to 95 or 100, depending where you look (source; wakipedia). His historical veracity leaves rather a lot to be desired as well. I don't think he actually *knows* any history, other than the type of silliness you pick up in High School history classes. Diamond is a professional zoologist by trade, and it shows. For example, his ideas about China would be laughable to a Chinese person conversant with their history. He also got some of the dates and a lot of facts wrong about the conquest of South America. Sure, lots of Aztecs and Incas died of disease: most of them *after* they were conquered by the Spaniards. In fact, the few Spaniards there were were far more afflicted by tropical diseases than were the Aztecs: this is recorded historical fact. Yet, it doesn't fit Diamond's "Westerner as plague rat" theory, so he doesn't think to bring it up. Either he learned his history of the conquest of South America in a comic book, or he's deliberately misleading the reader. This is a complete travesty, and rather indicates you shouldn't trust anything else he's stated either.

>When people find out I write about history, the often bring this book up. I tend to politely change the subject. Everyone who reads this book thinks they're uniquely enlightened for having read it. In reality, they've been duped by a half baked popular writer who knows very little about history, and has some very ugly views about humanity.

>russian civilization

Literally everything.

>author gets even basic civil war dates wrong and draws wrong conclusions from it
>tons of unsourced hearsay ("it is said", "they said" etc) throughout the entire book, makes you think he just outright invented many things to fit his narrative
>taking long debunked wartime Soviet propaganda at face value
>value judgements and virtue signaling out the ass, Palmer tries his hardest to portray the baron as some kind of proto-Hitler, also villifying Tibetan Buddhism for no reason
>made up assertion that Sternberg hated Slavs, with no source given (again, to fit the HE WUZ LITERALLY HITLER nonsense claim), despite him being a Russian patriot and some of his best friends being Slavs (such as the Pole Ferdynan Ossendowski)
>even despite outrageous, fictional dramatic narrative, the book's writing style is boring as shit

Not true. He's a geographer and anthropologist as well as ornithologist.

>t. Brezhnev

This refutation is pretty laughable. Locklin is creating the same issues that Diamond did; Diamond was not a historian and neither is Locklin. Just in this alone there is an abundant of factually incorrect information.
We all know that a lot of what Diamond says is false, but resorting to cherry picking and made up information is not the way to deal with this. Sometimes are feel like people hate Diamond so much that others will accept anything they say as fact just to discredit the man.

Why is it bad?

Look up Annales School critiques. Its been ages since I studied the historiography for it and am away from my books, so I can't give a real answer. Note that there is a significant difference between recognizing the impact of geography and geographical determinism.

Much of the critique early Annales took was that it placed geography as the only thing that had any real historical agency. Modern Annales is much more nuanced and does give more historical agency to individuals/socio-economic groups/natural disasters/accidents of fate in the face of broad geographic trends.

But magical success clay explains everything. All we have to do is destroy the West so we can dig out the stolen success clay and give it back Africa to have true equality at last. Don't you want equality, justice, peace and free love?

I thought this was highly criticised for being left wing agenda dressed in pseudo-science

>explanation about why Europeans were better with guns than the Chinese who invented them
Which was?

well, dinosaurs WERE descended from birds, sweetie.

Read it, and then read an actual history book.

GGS is a propagandized version of history. It has half-truths and omissions everywhere.

This is a great book.

>trying to theorize human history

it's time to accept it was pretty fucking random

It seems to piss off both tumblr and /pol/'s narratives at the same time, so there's probably something to it.

It also pisses off scholars. It's just garbage.

But does it piss off scholars because of actual errors, or does it piss off scholars for ideological reasons (see )? I thought it went too far in the explanations sometimes, but historical lenses are inherently all reductive or myopic in their own ways and I don't see why this one should be reviled in particular.

Name a better book about geographical influence on human history

What's so wrong with this book again?

I'm a pseudo-intellectual at best.

It has some good points to make at its base, but it's also incredibly reductionist and also gets a few facts wrong.

Also retards on one end of the spectrum hate it because they think it's spouting eighteenth century super racism while retards on the other end of the spectrum hate it because it's refuting their eighteenth century super racism.