After being mightily impressed with Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", I am disappointed with this one. Some interesting information in here but doesn't feel like a cohesive book. His information about New Guinea is the most interesting. Some chapters were really difficult to get through as they were as dry as a Wikipedia page. A lot of what's in the book doesn't feel well researched, seems more like his thoughts and impressions. He probably should've written a book just about New Guinea life, and there's no way this book needed to be 400+ pages. I hope his book "Collapse" which is sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read is more thrilling than this one.