By: Deve Persad on May 17, 2014
This little project was intriguing to me: using the principles of Josh Kaufman’s book, The First 20 Hours, How to Learn Anything…Fast. Admittedly I probably spent close to twenty hours trying to figure out what to do. I likely should have settled on learning how not to avoid the task at hand. It did cross…
By: Ashley Goad on May 16, 2014
Twenty Hours? Seriously? I have heard of taking 21 days to form a habit, but 20 hours seemed impossible! How can I possibly learn something new, something from scratch in just 20 hours? Where do I even begin? Indeed, Josh Kaufman, in his book The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything…Fast, summarizes three key things…
By: rhbaker275 on May 16, 2014
Following a ten minute brainstorm session I decided I wanted to learn: Lithography… Dancing – aside from slow dancing… Power Point presentations – more than basics… Art and design… Sound system fundamentals and operation… Rose gardening (in a Northern climate)… Shrub and tree trimming… Spiritual formation… Spanish, more than greetings… Website design… Writing or designing…
By: Clint Baldwin on May 16, 2014
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel – for which Diamond won the Pulitzer prize in 1998 – is a book that literally takes into broad-ranging account the development of the whole world. Diamond is most concerned with initial societal development as relates to environmental factors and subsequent intersocietal repercussions based on such early development. Diamond…
By: Stefania Tarasut on May 15, 2014
Reading through Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond this week was refreshing and humbling. The book can be described in one sentence: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” (25) All though this is a common sense way of thinking,…
By: Bill Dobrenen on May 10, 2014
In his award winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond attempts to discuss the history of everyone over the past 13,000 years.[1] What I most appreciated about this book was Diamond’s attempt to give a history of the World that was not limited to Western history. This was a welcome change from our readings…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on May 10, 2014
From the obscurity of prehistoric beginnings, humanity arose and spread throughout the world conquering and being conquered. The factors leading up to who would become the conquerors and who would be the conquered ones is the main question that Jared Diamond gives a heroic attempt in answering throughout his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The…
By: Miriam Mendez on May 9, 2014
Who would have thought that a walk on the beach, studying birds, would lead to a question that would penetrate the heart of a great mystery of human history. It is obvious that Jared Diamond was not expecting to encounter such a question as he walked along a beach on the tropical island of New…
By: Michael Badriaki on May 9, 2014
I contemplated naming this post “Thank you, Yali and Diamond”. There is a lot to reflect on in Diamond’s book “Guns, germs and steel”. Even though the book is steeply grounded in the theory and science of human evolution, the author, masterfully lays out data that shows how modern history has been shaped by conquest.…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on May 9, 2014
The title of this week’s reading “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” really drew my interest to the author’s theory of the history and prehistory of human development. Jared Diamond compellingly writes about the development of human societies for the last thirteen thousand years.He points out that all human beings were hunter-gatherers…
By: Carol McLaughlin on May 9, 2014
More than forty years ago a New Guinean named Yali posed a question to a biologist as they walked along. “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”[1] Jared Diamond, the biologist and author of Guns,…
By: Julie Dodge on May 9, 2014
In 1952, a young Ernesto Guevera and his friend, Alberto Granado, set off on a transcontinental motorcycle ride from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Caracas, Venezuela. Guevera was a semester shy of completing his medical degree. Both intended to work for a time in a leper colony in Peru as part of their journey. The…
By: rhbaker275 on May 9, 2014
Jared Diamond was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Journalism – General Nonfiction for his book, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.[1]The award citation chronicles the worthiness of Diamond’s work: No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater…
By: Deve Persad on May 8, 2014
Last week, two of the guys from our leadership team, and myself, attended a one day conference on the local impact of Human Trafficking. For many of the one hundred people in attendance curiosity turned into surprise and then shame by the end of the day. Curiosity because many in attendance wouldn’t have given thought…
By: Ashley Goad on May 8, 2014
(Note: I wrote this while sitting under my favorite mango tree in Haiti!) Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society by Jared Diamond may be the first book I have read completely from cover-to-cover in quite awhile. Perhaps it was because I was overcome by the narrative storytelling over the course of 13,000…
By: Liz Linssen on May 8, 2014
For Diamond, history reveals a story of inequalities among the development of the modern world and therefore demands an explanation. He asks the important question, “[W]hy did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents?” [i] He goes on, “In 11,000 BC, all societies everywhere were bands of preliterate hunter-gatherers with stone tools.…
By: Richard Volzke on May 8, 2014
The book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was filled with controversial facts. While the author does appropriately state some of the factors that trigger societal development, Scripture doesn’t support some of the facts and statements that he provided. There was a large emphasis on evolution, however the author did not fully…
By: John Woodward on May 8, 2014
My confession: I have a Masters in history. Actually, I am a student of a very tiny part of history, which encompasses only modern Europe. I know that my focus is extremely narrow, but after reading Gun, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, I am extremely humbled by how very…
By: Miriam Mendez on May 3, 2014
You don’t have to go very far in the book to identify what Jardine’s argument is all about. In The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society, Jardine wants his readers to know that his argument is that present day Western societies are in the grip of a profound moral crisis.[1] He states that this crisis…
By: Miriam Mendez on May 3, 2014
Are the good intentions of Christians enough to engage and change the world? Can Christians pray long enough, hard enough and loud enough to affect change in the world? Are there enough Christians to fully embrace God’s call on their lives to change the world? Are Christians engaging in enough critical thinking that will help…
