[SeattleUte]

I enjoyed Diamond's writing style. Pretty fascinating book. Definitely changed the way I look at the world in many ways.[/quote]

The opening of "Guns, Germs and Steel" is as captivating as any I have experienced. Diamond quotes extensively from that padre's diary describing Pizarro's vicous conquest of the Incas. Then he asks the following rhetorical question that goes to the whole point of the book (I'm paraphrasing): "Why didn't Atahualpa go in a sailing ship with 100 men to Spain, trick the King of Spain, execute him, and then subjugate millions of Spaniards with his force of 100?" Your first reaction is to say, "Well, of course, becuse Atahualpa didn't have any massive oceangoing sailing ships, horses, guns, steel," then it hits you--Why didn't he have these things? Diamond poses the question--essentially THE question of our day and age--in a way that most people have never considered, and the reader is hooked.