Us Octogenarians have to stick together! 80 is the new 50! From 80 to 90 is a time to tell all the younger folks the truth about their country, their lives, and perhaps their future. I enjoyed all these letters pro and con - some amusing - or as I wrote on my 80th birthday "Hey Lady/I'm 80/Won't you come and dance with me!" And that Diamond is Jewish is even better. Shalom, Cantor Bob Cohen
13
I was a researcher/reporter at Discover magazine from 1992 to 1995. My main role was fact-checking. I fact-checked several Jared Diamond articles (he wrote frequently for Discover during that period) and found his writing littered with errors. His mistakes all boiled down to the same thing, which Anand Giridharadas forcefully identifies in this review: Diamond has a political agenda and then looks for "facts" to support his view. One day, while checking a Diamond article on race, I called a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History. The scientist said he was a friend of Diamond and recently named a bird species after Diamond. He said Diamond was an authority on bird anatomy. But then, he added, "Don't believe anything Jared Diamond writes about human beings." That quote has stuck with me ever since.
141
An Esquire article published in September 2018 listed their top 40 "Best Nonfiction Books" of the year so far. 60% were written by women.
Also, I might add, 80% of literary agents in the US are women. And 60% of readers in the US are women.
Women got it going on!
17
Diamond’s book doesn’t really sound very good, gathering facts and isolated opinions to suit a predetermined “Framework”.
However this review isn’t very good either, mainly because it seems equally ruled by a Framework. The Framework in which white males don’t know anything and should no longer speak. Why is it so awful that Diamond said a young woman was “psychologically naive”? Is the word “naïve” no longer acceptable? Can only a woman call another woman naïve in this day and age? Should Diamond only pass judgment on the maturity of young white males? At what age must a person stop discussing younger people? How old is reviewer Giridharadas himself? Is he of proper age to opine on these things?
And Diamond’s lament on the overuse of cell phones also seems inoffensive - it actually seems to reflect one of the few opinions that pretty much everyone on Earth agrees on, and is actually written about seemingly daily in this very newspaper.
I wonder whether this reviewer would have been so harsh if he didn’t know Diamond’s sex, race, and age.
103
I love this review. And, I'm reminded of every time a guy over 65 has lectured me on one of my areas of expertise. I now, at 79, don't get lectured...and I restrain myself when talking with a younger person. Wish we could make this required reading in every academic department.
30
The reviewer’s repeated use of “white male” is subject to the same framework errors as the critique of Diamond’s framework. Frameworks, models, paradigms, mindsets, narratives have their value—and their limitations. And rarely announce what these are. The conscientious borrower or creator looks for them. But the user of one criticizing another’s use of another one, has a special responsibility.
56
'Winners Take All' is a very fine book, and I can see the reviewer knows his stuff. But why is he reviewing this book? By his own standards, it seems not worth reviewing. The gist is in three words: "Not worth reading."
The laziest catch-all distinction in US criticism and comment today is the blithe assumption that race and gender must define quality of work. Diamond's true flaw is that he is an old white guy, while better writers who are female and/or "persons of color" are ignored? Can that really be the vital distinction?
That's not Diamond's fault. How and when and where you were born does not fatally determine the quality of your work.
Diamond is a brand -- lots of old white guys don't have a brand. Giridharadas too is a brand, a newer and maybe even a better one, and may some day write a less discerning book, at which time maybe some new, fresher brand name who is, say, from another planet, will review that book and deride the ill-fated failings of old earth-bound authors limited by the earth's two-gender species biology.
32
I agree that Upheaval isn't as good as Jared Diamond's earlier
books but this review seems to be about something else entirely. Criticizing someone's work on the basis of their race or gender is never acceptable, no matter who is doing it.
So Diamond is a white male. Well, he was born that way. Isn't being an educated person these days all about accepting our differences rather than constantly attacking each other?
47
@DoNotResuscitate
None of Diamond's books is good. They appeal to people whose ability to deal with subtlety and complications is low and whose appetite for pseudo-profound "big ideas" is high, about 30,000 feet high. Read authors who interpret the world, not who straitjacket it. (And, no "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was never a good book. Just look at its gross oversimplifications and willingness to ignore inconvenient data.)
27
Sort of very deeply Mel Brooks kinda funny that Diamond is “ a white male” now. He is Jewish. His big book — Guns, Germs, and Steel — was written to attack the notion that white males did much over the past 500 years that was truly original.
44
While I appreciate Giridharadas for calling out Diamond for lack of fact checking and overuse of generalizations, I found that the reviewer fell into many of the same traps that he calls Diamond on the carpet for (ageism for one). First, while it certainly is true that Diamond is a professor of geography, by failing to mention any of the other disciplines that Diamond has studied and taught (such as physiology), Giridharadas leaves the reader with the idea that geography may be all Diamond knows thus creating a false impression of his credentials. If we can't trust Giridharadas on the big things how can we trust him on the minutiae? Also the implication that being female, non-white, or younger means a writer is somehow better seems a little presumptuous. Is "Upheaval" a good book? Sounds like not, but because it is written by an old, white man is probably not the reason. Young women can write bad books too. Like it or not, veteran writers get the shelf space and it can be hard for young writers to get a foot in the door; however, to imply that older writes should be shelved (ha ha) in favor of those younger is ageism. As for the purported sexism of looking at a young woman as psychologically naive, well, I suspect most young people are psychologically naive compared to an 80 year old just by virtue of being young. Diamond may be sexist, I don't know, but this example did not illustrate sexism to me. Instead it sounds like an older person who is perhaps a bit jaded.
55
Having read two-thirds of Guns, Germs, and Steel, I have no doubt that Giridharadas is telling it like it is...
17
Order of reviewer's intent: 1) Set agenda, 2) Review book based on set agenda.
Other than that, I read every word of the review and found it stimulating.
6
Of course, women can also make egregious mistakes, as the case of Naomi Wolf's last books shows, but I really appreciated Giridharadas calling out how much more difficult it is for women and colour to get access to the bully pulpit Diamond has. Editors as much as fact checkers are the problem, as is the fact that truly scholarly books are seldom reviewed in the New York Times or found on bookstore shelves.
21
Monocausotaxophilia: the love of single cause explanations that explain everything and a pathology of the 30,000-foot writer.
For the most part I thought this was a very good review, detailing why this is a poorly conceived and argued book, but it ended by condemning it, not for what it is, but for what it isn't.
10
Vg review (except I’m not sure he’s been to Australia lately?).
To which I would add, crisis? What crisis?
Read some more history.
Most of us, at least in “Western” countries, live in a comparative paradise.
6
Where have all the fact-checkers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the fact-checkers gone? Long time ago. Where have all the fact-checkers gone? Gone to the unemployment line, every one. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
49
Bravo bravo. The best book review I have read in years! This old lady is happy to read the authentic truth written so eloquently. and Jill Lepore, as noted, is the best of the best. hurrah for factchecking and for inclusivity.
31
This has to be the most useful review I have ever read, bar none. Kudos to the reviewer for doing her job!
21
Interesting.
I am not an expert on any of this but I did have questions after reading "Collapse' Well, seems there is a book called "Questioning Collapse." by McAnany.
6
Yikes and zounds! Mr. Giridharadas sure called a comeuppance on Mr. Diamond's "I have a friend" methods of research. As one launching into the writing of a non-fiction book, I'm going to up my game in the footnote department after reading this!
23
Giridharadas slams Diamond for making sweeping generalizations -- and then implies that women and non-whites like him are more accurate writers and given less leeway by publishers and critics! "I know so many younger writers, especially women and people of color, who are smart, thoughtful, buttoned up and pretty damn accurate who would kill for an opening to publish a book with a serious publisher — and who know in their bones that, if they were ever this sloppy, their career would be over before it had even begun."
15
Sounds as if some of the flights at 30,000 feet are occurring in a 737 Max 8. OOPS.
Does Diamond's thesis bear in any way on the seductive but preposterous claim that provided so much fuel for the ascendance of Donald J. Trump--that his allegedly fabulous acumen as a business man would provide the solution to all the nation's problems, since nations are so much like corporations or households?
13
@teach No. Diamond sees Donald Trump as a major threat to democracy and civilization. On the podcast, The Gist, Diamond expresses how he has seen dire times in every decade of his life, but that the threat posed by Trump is the gravest threat to democracy he's witnessed.
25
Thanks, Anand, for doing the work it seems the book’s editors and publisher should have done. The presumption of quality, competence, and value extended to some in our society and not others is a multigenerational wrong that reviews like this help highlight and reverse. Thanks for pointing out the wrong way to explain and for pointing to an example of the right way.
27
Let's start with his list of "errors." 'He claims that, under President Ronald Reagan, “government shutdowns were nonexistent.” But they occurred a number of times.' Nope. Sorry. Partial government shutdowns do not count at government shutdowns.
Then he claims that we just can't trust Diamond because he claims Australian-rules football is played "no where else." And his damning indictment? It's played on Nauru! Sure, for all 11,000 citizens of Nauru. They were literally administered by Australia from the end of WWI until 1966 with a brief period of Japanese occupation. Sure, they got independence...except that their currency is...The Australian dollar and that Australia provides all military defenses and EVEN PREPARES NAURU'S BUDGET. So, yes, "Australian-rules football" is played elsewhere...but not professionally.
Here's the first problem for Giridharadas: history exists, and he doesn't like that history is not as woke as he would like it to be.
The other serious problem for Giridharadas is that Diamond is much smarter that Giridharadas will ever be. When Guns, Germs, and Steel came out, Diamond took readily available information that anyone could find and put it together in a way that revolutionized how with thought about civilization, development, and progress. And for a lot of folks who had spent their lives with that information and who could not see what Diamond saw in it, the experience was humiliating. They are still angry. This review was an act of vengeance.
67
@JWC
"Guns, Germs, and Steel" remains an important book despite the many subject area experts who have critiqued it. Diamond viewed a vast body of historical data through a geographer's lens and he did it brilliantly. That doesn't changed the perfectly valid criticisms of the reviewer and it doesn't mean that the reviewer is stupid.
39
@JWC I dunno. I couldn't finish "Gens, Germs, and Steel" because, honestly, it seemed a little obvious and simplistic and I hated the chatty, conversational style. I was surprised it was so popular.
10
@JWC
One book can be excellent and a later one poor. An author can be smart and yet be sloppy with facts and substitute anecdata for robust evidence. Sometimes our heroes disappoint us.
15
I would love to read a book review that doesn't even mention the age, race, and gender of the author. I don't want my judgement of the book affected by embarrassing and irrelevant details of Diamond's personal habits like his dependence on his wife and secretary, or his cellphone and computer usage . Let the work stand alone and hold the writer responsible for its words, regardless of who he or she may or not be.
76
@george
But is seems likely that this book would never have been published if it wasn't for the author's track record with previous best sellers. The publisher is counting on the buying public being familiar with Diamond's past work and his reputation as a paradigm-breaking, original thinker who takes a very broad view and draws on many areas of human knowledge that he acknowledges he has no expertise in. Part of the promotion of a book like this includes many, many puff pieces about the author and his charmingly old fashion quirks and foibles.
22
Filling in a "framework" with selective facts seems par for the course in journalism, and in most big-picture books including Anand's own recent Winners Take All. Even the solution here, opening up the conversation to diverse writers, is a logical fallacy -- who is to say that non white male writers won't offer another "framework" i.e. narrative with selective facts?
It seems The Framework is just another word for personal narrative. It could even be for a good cause--i.e. climate change journalism in the NYTimes that focuses exclusively on edge case studies.
I'm less interested in the thesis of this book as the Anand G's criticism applied to his own book. I agree that elite philanthropy lets Billionaires off the hook -- but he conveniently ignores Warren Buffett campaigning for tax hikes on the rich. It also ignores the historical good done by the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and Gates -- what seems to me is that both philanthropy and capitalism and government have all gone off the rails because we have lost sight of the physical nature of the word--infrastructure, architecture, nuts and bolts.
20
Beware of those calling for revolutions ... it’s usually just a cycle of shifting the elites at the table. This applies as much to Anand G as anyone ... who seem to be more interested in constructing his Framework than changing the paradigm to benefit everybody.
22
Much of the crisis in this country was brought on by the press declining to perform the one job it had, journalism, in favour of non-stop unbridled propaganda.
11
Re Jill Lepore’s These Truths, lauded by this reviewer: it is so filled with errors to make Diamond seem like a soull mate. Shocking for a Harvard professor of history. Look at the readers’ reviews posted on Amazon. Stunning and sloppy, calling into question the entire book.
25
I don't know what other readers look for in a book review, but this was NOT it for me. I want the reviewer to give me an overall sense of the book's content and point(s) of view, and then a balanced evaluation of its good and bad points.
The reviewer's ego and references to
his/her own career, writings, "superior" intellect, etc., should never be put on display. I am totally turned off by reviewers who feel it is their right and duty to trash another person's work -- and when that is what I find, it immediately raises a red flag with regard to the reviewer's integrity. So, to the NYT, I ask: Do your editors not review the book reviewers' work against a set of standards for book reviewers?
If not, then why not? If so, perhaps you could share with us, your paid subscribers, what those standards are?
61
@Brenda J Gannam
Your comment, like so many in this thread, seems based on personal outrage and it makes me wonder how many people commenting here are basically big fans of Diamonds. Count me among you if you are. I still think that "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was an amazing piece of work and I recommend it all the time. That doesn't change the facts about this book. The reviewer didn't like the book because he found its thesis shallow and the writing full of factual errors. And he rightly points out that publishers have a duty to rigorously fact-check non-fiction books. Mr. Diamond has a big, well deserved reputation as a writer and thinker, but it sounds like this book does a serious disservice to that reputation and was no doubt rushed to publication by a publisher only interested in sales.
26
I think you need to reread my comments. There is no "personal outrage" as I am not Jared Diamond, have no connection to him, and am neither a fan or foe. The same goes for this reviewer.
My comments were intended as a general statement about reviewers who promote their own views and careers, and those of other writers, instead of focusing on the requirements of the job at hand --which I described as it has been explained to me by editors of various publications. A book review is not a creative writing exercise -- it is a specific task, with specific requirements. In my opinion, the reviewer did not meet those requirements -- indeed, violated the principles of a good review. That is why I questioned the NYT at the end for a statement of their standards.
25
I thought this was just nit-picking (which much of it is) from a bitter writer. Then I see who WROTE it - Mr. Giridharadas - with his many interviews and TED talk - is very much of the 30,000 ft zeigeisty club! I actually don't mind his theories, but his scrapping here does him little good. Its small minded, petty and misses the main points. And the Framework IS a novel way for readers, less expert than Mr. G, to conceptualize world problems.
- Oh. I've lived in Japan and Australia and find Diamond's (admittedly outsider) views of both to be almost spot on to date. As is his other work which I'm far from an expert in but seems to comport with what I've learned elsewhere. Plate of sour grapes for Mr. G.
39
Giridharadas says that he is not nitpicking, but at least some of his examples are the worst sort of nitpicking.
Giridharadas says that Diamond ' refers to Lee Kuan Yew as “Singapore’s prime minister,” even though he no longer occupies that role, not least because he’s dead. But the relevant part of the book is speaking in the past tense and quoting Lee Kuan Yew's words when he was Singapore's Prime Minister. That's a standard way of writing. No-one blinks if someone writes "As Prime Minister Winston Churchill said...".
Giridharadas does this himself in his own books. In India Calling, he describes the Emergency, 'in which massive civil unrest had prompted Prime Minister Indira Ghandi to suspend the Constitution and take matters into her own hands.' Indeed, he does it in the review himself: 'Andrew Inglis Clark, Tasmania's Attorney-General'.
Surely, it would be unfair to call what Giridharadas wrote in his book an 'error', because Indira Ghandi 'no longer occupies that role, not least because she is dead', or to chastise him for getting Andrew Inglis Clark confused with the current occupant of that office, Will Hodgman? And yet, he not only does this to Diamond but cites it as part of his case that Diamond's book is 'riddled with errors.'
No doubt, Diamond made some factual mistakes. No doubt Giridharadas did in his book (not to mention this review.) But I suspect the New York Times also made a mistake publishing this carping review.
93
Ouch.
4
Anand's review is a critique of privileged white males and how they, history's winners, have largely written history and assumed the mantle of wisdom. I"ve always been suspicious of people who write or talk with unfailing certainty, who rather than propose ideas, they pronounce them with a certainty than can only come from privilege or psychosis.
7
Fact-checking Anand Giridharadas's fact-checks suggest that he is indeed nitpicking, mainly with language rather than facts.
In his first claim he writes "Diamond gets wrong the year of the Brexit vote." But the actual quote (not supplied by Giridharadas) from Diamond is " Think of the United Kingdom 'resolving its world role by entering the European Union in 1973 and then voting to leave in 2017." 1973 is the date the UK Parliament voted to enact laws to enter the union, while 2017 is the date the same parliament voted to enact laws authorising the UK to leave it. The two referenda, both non-binding, were in 1975 and 2016. Maybe Diamond got the referendum wrong, or maybe he was talking about parliamentary voting, which fits with the rest of the sentence. To claim without qualification that this as a wrong fact by Diamond is wrong. A possible wrong fact, maybe.
Likewise, Giridharadas quotes JD as saying "“government shutdowns were nonexistent" under Reagan, but retorts that such shutdowns happened a 'number of times', citing a NYT article. The article shows that there was a total of 2 days of shutdowns over eight years (a day and 2 half-days, each involving only a fraction of the US government workforce.) If Diamond had said 'virtually non-existent' he would have been right. But people use 'non-existent' in that sense all the time, without book reviewers or others playing gotcha.
In short, these are language critiques, and weak ones. Did the NYT fact-check them?
85
Criticize the book all you want, expose every incorrect fact, every flaw in logic, every cliché, every example of slop.
It's a book review. Leave the writer out of it.
27
The last time I looked at a Jared Diamond book it was before I developed the Google habit but even without that his work was utterly characterized by sweeping generalizations many of which were unverifiable and unfalsifiable. An up to date review of most of his work would sound a lot like this review.
16
Not every story that hasn't been told is worth telling. Not every generalization is incorrect. Not every critic is intelligent.
20
A great review. Although his continuously stated preference for “women and people of color” and open hostility toward “white males” taints the quality of his argument, he’s right that publishers should be fact checking know it alls like this.
15
I guess the reviewer didn't like the book, and this is not a good review?
9
Many thanks to the reviewer for his impassioned assertion that facts do, indeed, matter...
15
This is very good review of the book “Upheaval “but Anand’s real contribution is to say to publishers and writers alike: hey, you’re smart but stop writing as if you know it all. You don’t. You haven’t. You won’t. Publishers: stop foisting half bake drivel into the “ long read “ reading environment.
10
While I haven't read this book to judge it on its own merits, I don't believe the author of this article did a very good job in actually discussing why Mr. Diamond's theory is wrong, in the first place. He pointed out a few factual mistakes, but that is to be expected in this type of work, and a person can make mistakes on some of the minor details and still be right about the big picture.
Furthermore, a person can even be completely wrong about the big picture but still offer useful insights. This "black and white" line of thinking, that a person must be 100% right and unbiased in order to be listened to or acknowledged is not helpful at all. Based on this review, I have no idea of what his actual theories are and if they make any sense or not.
Being from a highly underrepresented (and often maligned) minority group, myself, I understand the concern that people have about certain "old, white men" getting an inordinate amount of recognition. However, that does not mean that their ideas are always all wrong, either. Ideas should be judged on their own merits, regardless of source. It is good to understand the writer's background and potential biases, but that shouldn't be the only basis of judgment.
No doubt, the issue of diversity in media and scholarship is very important, but the approach taken here is misguided. Instead of writing a substantive article properly documenting this issue, the author preferred to write a "hit piece" to piggyback upon the book's popularity.
51
Thanks, Anand, for doing the work it seems the book’s editors and publisher should have done. The presumption of quality, competence, and value extended to some in our society and not others is a multigenerational wrong that reviews like this help highlight and reverse. Thanks for pointing out the wrong way to explain and for pointing to an example of the right way.
12
Thanks, Anand, for doing the work it seems the book’s editors and publisher should have done. The presumption of quality, competence, and value extended to some in our society and not others is a multigenerational wrong that reviews like this help highlight and reverse. Thanks for pointing out the wrong way to explain and for pointing to an example of the right way.
1
In addition to my previous takedown of this article, I also wanted to address the value of these "30,000-foot frameworks."
The value of these "big picture" approaches isn't that they are absolutely right and contain no mistakes or biases; it is that they help people get a better grasp of the interrelated nature of many disparate phenomena.
Most people are not very widely read across disciplines, so it is almost impossible for them to "connect the dots" between seemingly unrelated ideas. In today's environment of exponentially growing data and hyper-specialization, it is getting harder and harder to separate the wheat from the chaff--even for specialists.
So, when a writer does a decent job of this, they should be lauded, even if there are some mistakes or over-generalizations. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The only way we can progress in our understanding of our interdisciplinary world is to create and test new paradigms that help us better understand it.
As Kuhn argues, paradigms and paradigm shifts are necessary for the progress of science and humanity. While random facts are rarely of much value, in isolation.
When books like Upheaval are well-publicized they often stimulate vigorous interdisciplinary debates which can then lead to better and more inclusive frameworks, and finally to new paradigms.
We desperately need that.
So, even when theories are flawed, they can still play a valuable role in the progress of knowledge and humanity.
28
After reading most of the comments, one thing caught my attention; most of the negative comments about the book came from people who hadn't read the book, just the review, and went on to say they would not read the book just based on the review alone.
5
I almost entirely agree with Aanad's criticisms, but Diamond's book has much worth despite that fact that his wife and an assistant type for him, etc. showing he's out-of-touch.
At 30,000 feet one gets a different, not necessarily a fatally flawed perspective.
The several causes for our serious problems he points out are not by any means original insights but they remain telling points re the unraveling of the U.S. in the way he places them together suggesting they cause our peril.
2
I have not read Diamond's book, Upheaval, but accept that some of Anand's criticisms probably have merit. However, parts of the review are a bit pedantic considering the scope of the book. For example, Anand twice takes issue with Diamond's use of the word unanimous (perhaps some slight literary leeway here?) and dredges up some useless and basically irrelevant factoid about the international reach of Australian-rules football (for all intents and purposes a peculiarly Aussie passion). If a critical review of an expansive book is going to fixate on such issues, then one would imagine that such a short review would certainly, itself, be unerringly correct in fact. Yet Mr Giridharadas states that "the number of Americans who move in a given year has dropped by half since the 1940s". In fact, as per the NPR interview and Census Bureau research he cites, the percentage of Americans who move has declined from about 20% in the 1940's to around 10% (2016 figures). As the population has increased approximately 2.5-fold over this time frame, contrary to Anand's statement the number of Americans who move has actually increased. Of course, such a distinction might be irrelevant to Anand's argument, as were some of the trifling distinctions he raised concerning Diamond's writing.
35
I also thing there is far from unanimity among therapists about how to deal with a personal crisis
9
Interesting, I had a professor just like this. When students tried to correct him he ignored them, especially if they were women. What a waste of a semester and money. These sort of folks should be shunned, publicly.
14
Diamond has been a purveyor of pretentious nonsense for a long time, starting with Guns, Germs and Steel. A lot like Carl Sagan (I notice another commentor has pointed out that similarity). As an astrophysicist I knew enough to despise Sagan, although his worst offense against science was "nuclear winter". Add Stephen Jay Gould, the one-horse monthly columnist ("intelligence is not inherited") in Natural History, to the list.
It's the job of reviewers to catch this because publishers won't. Thank you for this review (even if you insist on clumsy prepositional phrases like "of color" rather than honest adjectives).
17
@Jonathan Katz
I'll risk the generality, and inform you that people "of color" prefer, nowadays, to be called people of color. But if you don't believe me, feel free to look it up.
13
If a philosopher is an elder, the listener has to own up and hear the echoes. Diamond e.g. says 1 billion Africans would have better circumstances in Europe, something that has to be examined along with Garret Hardin's often-cited 'tragedy of the commons'. Implications for Trump's America? Uh, yes.
It's easy to deflect a review toward an erratum exegesis - harder to illustrate the author's message. Why bother people with one more edit?
2
I enjoyed reading this author's review. His wit and sarcasm are well-taken! I want to see more of his writing in The Times.
60
I highly recommend the author’s recent book, “Winners Take All.” It’s brilliant and engaging.
8
Nice, don’t think I have read this entertaining of a review before!
22
Absolutely agree, and I've read some of the Authors previous " work ".
An imprimatur of " the expert ", combined with slap-dash research and poor editing. Well, it's a living.
Sad.
11
Fact check, Mr. Giridharadas: Cruising altitude for modern jet aircraft is 33,000 to 42,000 feet, not 30,000. Look it up.
60
@David G
Wow your point is so salient and useful.
15
I felt the need to comment again because this is an important subject to me.
It seems to be more fashionable to criticise ‘big view’ thinkers. I would argue that we need the ‘big view’ as a corrective to the micro view. Indeed part of the reason why society doesn’t function is that knowledge has splintered into a million fragments and no one can weave it into any sort of narrative.
I think the reason people discredit ‘big view’ thinkers is that it harks back to religion. Big totalising systems of thought.
The Tao Te Ching is the foundational book of Taoism. Ursula Le Guin described it as ‘the aleph’ an image that showed the totality of the universe.
I’m losing the thread of what I’m trying to say here but I think ‘big view’ writers like mysticism are unpopular but probably we need these things to feel whole rather that thousands of unconnected randomised studies.
17
@Leejesh
I totally agree with you. Please see the comment I am about to make for another argument that I think you would agree with, as well.
2
@Leejesh Just for the record: The Daode jing (Tao Te Ching) was first labeled a legalist text in the earliest taxonomy of "schools" -- no surprise, then, that the oldest surviving commentary on the text is by the legalist of all time: Hanfei zi.
Also, if you read the text in proper translation, you'll see that, far from showing "the totality of the universe," it's a clever bit of political advice pitched exclusively to rulers who, in the eyes of the authors, need to up their game in terms of controlling their people. In short, it's a beautifully poetic recipe for soft fascism.
6
Blasting Diamond for errors then lionizing Lepore's error-filled book is pretty contorted, Anand.
As a heavy reader who likes the exercize of ideas, I assume that not all facts are correct and simply focus on the author's idea and model development. As such, I really enjoy Upheaval for connecting geopolitics to personal journeys, which I think is an important contribution to our times.
30
@chris as he stated himself, he prefers Lepore because she’s a “woman of color.”
5
There's resonance between Mr. Giridharadas' characterization of Dr. Diamond's curated worldview and Trump's attempts to re-make the world with himself at the very center.
Both require filtering the world through the imagined authority or folk wisdom derived from individual circumstance, personal experience, or specialized knowledge. Both are hammers that see nails everywhere that need to be hammered down.
They both presume that reality is subjective and personal and thus malleable by strength of will. As a poet once wrote: "...if a cage is perfect, a bird lives there."
They conflate their perceptions as universal truths. Dissent is an ad hominem assault that must be repudiated and punished.
Trump and Dr. Diamond approach the world as hobbyists who rummage through chaos to collect the "facts" that validate who they and what they do.
Whether Trump or Diamond, compelling evidence is an anecdote twisted to fit and justify their contrived narrative.
Truth becomes "truthiness". The value of veracity isn't illumination but as a shaded sales pitch to fuel consumption or manufacture an illusory consensus that demarcates an exclusive community of privilege and power.
Thus the advent of Fake News and journalism as "the enemy of the people" for challenging patent lies.
In a world of maximal disinformation and minimal focus, a ruling monarchy of one-eyed kings hold their blinded subjects in an iron grip.
That's how Trump sells everything he stands for.
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Maybe Diamond’s book was badly written but I do think there is a space for books with a broad scope. People put academics on a pedestal but academics are like frogs in a well. research topics tend to be quite narrow and focussed. You occasionally need people who can see the bigger picture.
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I once had a Letter to the Editor argument in Discover Magazine with Jared Diamond because he got all the various theories of the evolution of concealed ovulation in humans wrong. Completely wrong. His answer to my letter? That I was stupid. No, he got it all wrong, and as an anthropologist who has written extensively about all that topic, I know what I am talking about. Anthropologists and archaeologists absolutely hate Guns, Germs, and Steel because Diamond gets so much wrong, and in doing so he under minds our discipline. Add Card Sagan to your list of men who think they know everything but get everything wrong. Everyone large ego man thinks he is a Renaissance "man," but so few really are. Sadly, they make lots of money not doing their homework, which undermines academic who write for the popular audience and also get it "right."
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@Meredith Small I think the problem with social anthropology anyway is that it ‘doesn’t’ communicate. Anthropology is a store house of all these histories of other ways of being but anthropologists (at least here in the U.K.) don’t contribute to the debate.
Imagine if when Margaret Thatcher said TINA (there is no alternative) anthropologists had popped up to say ‘actually there are thousands of other ways’.
I’m willing to forgive writers for getting it wrong from time to time if they are brave enough to stick their head above the public parapet.
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@Meredith Small
Wow, that's disappointing (about Jared Diamond's take on anthropological topics in GGS). Especially because I'm a non-expert on the topic and assumed the concepts in his prize-winning book were largely correct and well-researched. Yikes, you've just proved the reviewer's point.
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@Leejesh - Well said. I have long thought that anthropologists, like too many people who actually spend their lives learning, do not show up enough in public discussions.
I am both an anthropologist and a psychotherapist. I strongly urge my companions in these fine fields to let us hear their voice more often. Just show up. And bring your voice.
18
Woooh. Awfully rough going in these waters.
5
Guns, Germs and Steel (also by Diamond) is one of my favorite all-time non-fiction books. It was incredibly well thought out and its findings and analysis were well supported and cohesively drawn, and I raved about it to my friends.
If you haven't read it, take a look.
I will pass on Upheaval.
If there is a lesson about how humans put make heroes out of other humans, it's this: the way to avoid disappointment is to always be skeptical, and never, ever subordinate critical thinking skills based on the faith or belief in any individual (including writer, politician, preacher), no matter how well deserved. Sure, praise the heights some can reach, but remember how fallible we all are.
This probably applies to countries as well.
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@MT See above comment by Meredith Small - who is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Cornell University. Turns out at least some of the concepts in Guns, Germs and Steel were not well-supported by actual experts. I am suddenly far less enamored by GGS than I was 5 minutes ago.
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@io
Your adoring response to Ms. Small is out of proportion. Why do you embrace the veracity of a few of her words without investigating for yourself
5
Sounds like this reviewer has it in for approaches that pose a hypothesis and then ask if the data fit. This can be enormously useful when trying to make sense of complex situations - cases where "The Framework" was indispensible. And Diamond has used it to yield great insights in G/G/S and Collapse. I will take the reviewer's claims of factual errors on faith, but I got no insight into Diamond's perspective on whether his "Framework" was consistent with the data, nor on any insights that may have resulted. As such I am highly skeptical of this reviewer's conclusions.
21
Don't tell me, let me guess: Giridharadas would like us to understand that his own books are much, much better than this one. I understand that the book-authoring business is as competitive as any other, so a certain amount of bashing-the-shop-around-the-corner is expected. But what Giridharadas has accomplished here is to neutralize any desire I might have had to read, not only Diamond's book, but also his own. Not so well-played...
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That would be a more compelling argument if they, say, wrote on the same topic, or were competing in some similar fashion.
8
I have been hearing about Justin Amash's calling for Trump's Impeachment and don't understand the debate as to why Amash did what he did.
I was in Politics and Prose this month and everywhere there were copies of Reza Aslan's Zealot. Even a superficial reading of Aslan's book leaves little doubt as to why a Antiochian Christian would call for Trump's Impeachment. Truth is not transactional.
Amash is a Christian and a Semite a religion far removed from the American Evangelical's European world view.
Aslan is a first rate historian whose biases are never allowed in his desire for truth. I suspect that Amash's libertarianism is rooted in the same need for truth. Ayn Rand was a libertine, Justin Amash is a Christian.
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@Montreal Moe Looks like you wandered into the wrong saloon, partner--the one you want is way up the street!
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@Montreal Moe This comment belongs to another article. There is no mention of Amash in this review.
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@Enemy of Crime
It may be a journey only I can make but this article commands this response. I find Diamond's solution absolutely insane. Western thought and its transactionality is our greatest threat.
Zealot a history of Jesus a perfect understanding that Jesus was a Semite, a Jew and not a Greek or a Roman.
I know Diamond's world, it tells me of the immigrants need to belong. Diamond is brilliant but where is the magic?
1
I haven’t read a takedown like this in the NYT since Pete Well’s review of Guy Fieri or any of their editorials about Donald Trump.
Very entertaining.
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@Michael B. Entertaining—and hard to stop reading! Let’s face it, the pleasures of Schadenfreude are like what one gets from popping M & M's.
6
@Michael B. Agreed. This fact-checking flight from 30,000 feet crash-landed in FlavorTown FrameworkTown.
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"Jared Diamond’s Upheaval' belongs to the genre of 30,000-foot books, which sell an explanation of everything. I travel often and see them a lot: at airport bookstores, where Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari (both of whom blurbed 'Upheaval') and Diamond, of course, deserve permanent shelves...."
"the genre of 30,000-foot books, which sell an explanation of everything." That description is superb, just superb.
I only wish that this reviewer or someone equally as iconoclastic, brilliant, and talented at incisive writing--as if he were the Second Coming of Paul Krugman in the latter's role as NYT columnist--would at book length take down and drub not only Diamond, Harari & Pinker, but also some of the many vendors of watered-down knowledge and one-size-fits-all conclusions like them.
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@Enemy of Crime. Pinker's is anything but a "Framework" approach. Better Angels starts with the data, and any Framework that emerges is amply supported by the reality. I suspect your desire for a "takedown" stems from your disagreeing with Pinker's conclusions. if so, you need to explain why you do.
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@Koho I agree. I’m no fan of Pinker’s. But I find most of his data-based facts incontestable and interesting in themselves. My objections are to his omission of other facts and his tacit acceptance of a materialist and atheist metaphysic. Although something of a showman (and a skillful and entertaining one), he is, on his own terms, a serious and responsible researcher, not a purveyor of grand visions seen from the clouds.
7
The author of this article is the author of a book, according to her Times byline, entitled in part "The Elite Charade of Changing the World."
Jared Diamond, a graduate of a prep school and Harvard College, and a long-time professor at a major university who is an older white man, surely qualifies as an "elite" individual in the author's parlance.
It is any surprise then that the author's entire article's point is to suggest that Diamond's analysis and prescription is a charade ....
I find it disquieting that the Times handed over this review to an individual with an overt self-serving agenda ...one which her analysis favors.
As a long-time reader, I am starting to see a pattern of the Times publishing a myriad of opinion and self-narrative pieces that will appeal viscerally to various constituencies, rather than focused on nuanced, clear analysis ....
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@William M. Palmer, Esq.
you say "I find it disquieting that the Times handed over this review to an individual with an overt self-serving agenda ...one which her analysis favors."
Did you just assume that anyone with such a 'self-serving agenda' must be a woman?
you might want to do some fact checking yourself. Anand Giridharadas is, in fact, a man.
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@William M. Palmer, Esq. Jared Diamond attended public schools in Boston -- Roxbury Latin in a public school -- and went to Harvard on a big scholarship at a time when there were very strict quotas for Jewish students.H e may be "elite" now but he certainly wasn't then.
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I may suggest you at least taking the time to find out the reviewer's gender prior to expressing faux outrage over him deeming himself worthy of reviewing a 'white man's book.
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Savage. I think you just killed my desire to read this book.
21
If I could upvote this 100 times, I would.
When I first met my (now) wife on one of our first dates, she rolled her eyes when I mentioned that I had particular fondness for the nonfiction writing of David Foster Wallace, Nassim Taleb and Yuval Harari. She (sort of) politely suggested that I explore works by non-male (and non-white) authors, with the implication that my worldview was unnecessarily limited by my narrow selection of (culturally white) male authors. She was, of course, correct; my view of the world has evolved tremendously since, along with an expanded literary repertoire.
When I read articles or popular references alluding to some of the "theory of everything" books I'd once revered, I find myself taken aback at how gullible I was once in believing that shallow, broad skims of the world might somehow explain an entire complex "system" in one fell swoop. We humans love stories purporting to connect all the dots; it turns out, however, that unraveling, on a far deeper level, how each of the dots plays its part in the wider human drama is far more interesting, and far more instructive.
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@RT
Might I suggest a very white, very establishment public intellectual whose latest book The Comeback does everything to tell us that we cannot survive European reason.
John Ralston Saul is an Oxford educated historian, lecturer, business executive, philosopher writer and Freedom of the Press Advocate two term head of Pen International. His 1995 Massey Lecture Series The Unconscious Civilization is electrifying.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1995-cbc-massey-lectures-the-unconscious-civilization-1.2946856
The Comeback (2014 English 2015 French) is about the truths we fool ourselves into believing and the honesty of the oral traditions of our aboriginal peoples and history that isn't about the past but of all time. The re-emergence of aboriginal partnership and its importance in our future gives hope and his ability to listen rather than pontificate gives merit to understanding. Youtube sees him interviewing some of the wisest of the wise unchained from Western thought.
13
OK, some facts were not checked and he took liberties to create and establish his reference point. Therefore that negates the premise and overall approach? Hardly.
In fact micro usually does reflect macro and vice versa. Its a valid concept to frame, and worthy of pursuit.
Consequences follow what is sown in the minds of a group or nation. So why not reverse engineer that possibility, which might offer clues to a more desirable end.. A perspective outside the six foot orthodoxy. A challenge to at least look at the big picture and test the theories. I deeply appreciate the valuable work of Jared Diamond. Hes a comprehensionist. The errors in fact check do not devalue the overall points made.
Thats the take away perspective we can use here. Last time I looked, people Were having an addictive need to constantly look at their phones and away from our real problems. .
Society here, Is divided and in crises. l One need simply look at the rankings of the US compared to other advanced cultures to see the depth of woes we`re in.
We live in a country where respect for our elders contribution is negligible and discounted. It creates a sad reflection of our ability to learn from history and past mistakes.
I question the authority of someone who can see above six feet, all the while checking their phone for the incoming barrage and googling from bed.
8
I had the privilege of attending a lengthy lecture by Dr Diamond at Cal Poly a few years ago put on by the Michael Shermer and the Skeptics Society. It was interesting and informative, but on balance this review, and the thoughts and questions posed by the author, fairly summarizes my thoughts at the time.
42
I have read and enjoyed some of Diamond’s past works. However, this review seems valid to me and some of Diamond’s other more recent works have shown similar weaknesses as well. When someone is mostly trading on a reputation it’s time it was called out.
For me, many of these critiques often apply to the whole genre of long non-fiction and suggest it may have passed its prime. The cherry picking of facts to fit the thesis, the use of out of date facts, and superficial analyses are all more and more easily revealed by the tools at hand and now widely available.
For fiction, give me a book, but more and more, non-fiction - not so much.
46
@DrBr “the cherry picking of facts to fit the thesis” - well said.
4
This critique is picking up on a broader problem in social science today: too many theories, not enough evidence.
As an academic social scientist, I've become increasingly alarmed by a tendency in my discipline to theorize first, and then either: (i) assert authority on the basis of one's ideology or identity, (ii) cherry-pick confirming facts that provide a veneer of authority. There is growing documentation of this problem in several disciplines -- e.g. the replication crisis in psychology, or the fake papers hoax in gender studies journals. This problem seems to be especially acute in qualitative research and on the far left, though Diamond is neither of those so perhaps the problem is broader still.
If the public is ever going to trust academia, we have to stick to the facts -- especially when the facts challenge our hypotheses. As this reviewer so aptly puts it, "If we can’t trust you on the little and medium things, how can we trust you where authors of 30,000-foot books really need our trust — on the big, hard-to-check claims?"
79
@? Thank you for this. Reminds me of the woman a few years ago who said that if you put your arms in the air you feel more powerful. She got a huge following. It was totally debunked as nonsense a few years later.
6
@? I couldn’t agree more. But I also wonder whether the abundance of little factual errors in the book under review, and in so many other non-fiction works published in the past few decades, may not be due simply to the fact that publishers no longer employ copy-editors. (That, of course, is itself a statement that is not literally true and, if made, ought to be accompanied by a host of qualifications and partial retractions—but you know what I mean.)
13
@?
Thank you for this. Reminds me of the woman a few years ago who said that if you put your arms in the air you feel more powerful. She got a huge following. It was totally debunked a few years later.
1
Years ago, following the release of Mr. Diamond's book "Collapse," I went to see him speak at U.C. Berkley. I was a huge fan of "Guns, Germs, and Steel," it changed the way I saw history and the world and I still think is a monumental work of "30,000 foot" thinking. Mr. Diamond's talk was interesting enough, but the moment that really stuck in my memory was during the audience Q&A. A young woman, most likely a student at the University, asked what a motivated young person could do to help create a better world. Mr. Diamond's response was something along the lines of, "Well young lady, someday some man will ask you to marry him, and when that time comes you should try to choose a wedding ring that was sourced responsibly..." (I am paraphrasing to the best of my ability, its been ~15 years). I was shocked that Mr. Diamond's response was, one, so casually and unthinkingly sexist and belittling, and two, so unimaginatively limited in scope and depth. The BEST thing a thoughtful and motivated young person could do was become a more responsible consumer? Really? Mr. Diamond, despite his occasionally remarkable insights and theories, seemed to be (like most of us) deeply trapped by the limitations of his position, generation, gender, upbringing, etc. Judging from this review it seems that this trend has only increased in the decade-and-a-half since that brief exchange.
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@François
Well, his name is Diamond.
29
Excellent review. I enjoyed Diamond's first book, now I would have to check whether it is so biased and full of wind.
11
For the same reasons that it's time to retire Jared Diamond, it's time to let go of the knee jerk impulse to elect another old white male for president. There are legions of smart, aware, feeling young women and minority men trying to get an ear. Let's listen to them for a change.
51
Been reading Jared Diamond since about 2005-6 and have all his 'popular books'. Guns, germs and steel is still my favorite. There is a reason the likes of him, Gladwell, Grant, Pinker and Harari have become popular in the past ten years or so. It is 'theorizing from 30,000 feet' and making things simple to understand and absorb which made them widely read, which is criticized (rightfully) here by Mr. Giridharadas. However, he himself makes the same mistake when he generalizes to make a point without checking/giving out the facts. One good example is the point he makes about Mr. Diamond's argument how Tokyo is clean because children are thought better (than say ones in New York). Mr. Giridharadas gives us numbers but numbers can be a lot more deceitful than words. Tokyo has about twice as many people as New York in its metro area and their overall budgets are comparable (NYC has also a capital budget). Thus, having twice as much money for sanitation as NYC is only normal and is not the sole reason, and people being very liberal with their rubbish in NYC is one big reason for our dirty streets. Probably he is quite right calling out this genre and more importantly criticising the publishing industry on how they treat young writers vs. established names and I support that 100% but maybe it is better to let the readers decide on that even if it takes a really long time with all the noise (marketing, social media, changing reading habits etc)? Regards, Oz
6
@Oz check your math. the statistic was quoted as a percent of budget, not dollars (or yen).
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@Sara Precisely. Since their budget for 2018 were nominally the same, dollar amount (yen converted to dollar for Tokyo to make it crystal clear for you) for Tokyo were about twice NYC but then about twice as much people live there. Also, my point was about observation - just look around when in NYC and also in Tokyo. It's not about sanitation budget!
4
@Oz I’ve lived in Tokyo for more than 12 years and I can tell you Mr. Diamond is completely wrong. It’s not that Japanese kids are taught to be clean and American kids are not. Japanese students are just as messy if not more so. It’s simply the entrenched society of adults who keep the city clean. Japanese don’t throw garbage in the street because the other adults aren’t. As a nation they value cleanliness just as they value the beauty of the cherry blossom. It’s a cultural difference.
9
As much as I like the concepts behind the books that Diamond writes, it's almost become sport to find the foundational errors in his works. As a famous man likes to say: Sad.
4
I read a recent interview with Diamond recently and his over generalizations, botched facts were surprising (I've read several of his books) and shocking.
It appears he's past his 'sell date' and needs to just retire; quietly. I will no longer recommend him to others.
Sad but that's what happens some times. Probably no one will tell him what is happening or is afraid to try.
28
"On a beach some time ago, I read Jill Lepore’s new history of the United States, “These Truths.” It is no less ambitious than “Upheaval.” But it is a new kind of big book for a new age. We know so much more now. We know the stories that haven’t been told, the points of view that have been neglected. Lepore manages to tell many stories, ever shifting her own perspective. She has no pat Framework, no bullet-point theory to test. She tells earthy stories about people famous and obscure, and she is confident enough to let the ideas emerge. She writes from the soil up, not the sky down".
And then you can always read Blogs like 'Keith Shorrocks Johnson Wellington NZ' that weave hundreds of stories and commentaries together in a zeitgeist tapestry featuring original insights and reflective poetry.
2
...and I'll not be reading that one. thank you, very entertaining review, I'm sorry you had to read the whole thing.
33
Wow! What a takedown. Thank you for the calling out of privilege and the call to arms for accountability.
57
*sigh* Jared Diamond is an anachronism at this point - a living, breathing fossil dig for 21st century anthropologists to try and understand. He had one "hit" - Guns, Germs and Steel, whose findings must have seemed profound... unless if you'd played any of Sid Meier's 'Civilization' series of computer games in the nine years prior to its release.
It's the ultimate fate of the academics of the 19th century - a pool to which Diamond longs to be with - to be as relevant to the 21st century as a clay pot is to the blue-ray disk.
8
“Guns, Germs, and Steel”’s mistakes and errors has been dismantled by enough others that I won’t bother to do it here. Read it, enjoyed it, but at base it’s a mess of misperceptions and faulty analysis. Sounds like the new one is the same.
13
Jared Diamond is not a great author, and I have to think his Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs & Steel was largely based on how inexorably "Woke" his attribution of racial divides to simple geography happened to be at the time. In truth, it's no surprise that a professor of geography thinks that the world is the way it is because of geography, but his writing tends to be demonstrably wrong in parts and tedious throughout. Sorry to hear his latest work is no different.
12
He who controls the helium controls the universe. My book is forthcoming. From *35,000* feet.
24