The first link in that reddit comment points to [1] which is a critique of another Diamond's book. But if you let me give two comments on it:
(1) In the first sentences, the author (a PhD student in history) cannot really hide his irritation that someone with a background in animal physiology has written a popular book about history. I have seen this ad hominem several times about Jared Diamond. Somehow those historians cannot stand that someone with no degree in history has written such a popular book.
(2) "Guns, Germs, and Steel attacked the notion that racial superiority explained Western global pre-eminence, a view taken seriously by almost no one who’s taken seriously"
Actually, what Guns, Germs, and Steel did, was to provide a first comprehensive theory (that I have heard of, anyway) that explains why Europe, and not someone else, rose to dominance. This is the merit. The main merit is not that it, as a side product, discredited the racially based theories.
Failing to understand this difference does not speak highly of the writer of the review.
(1) In the first sentences, the author (a PhD student in history) cannot really hide his irritation that someone with a background in animal physiology has written a popular book about history. I have seen this ad hominem several times about Jared Diamond. Somehow those historians cannot stand that someone with no degree in history has written such a popular book.
(2) "Guns, Germs, and Steel attacked the notion that racial superiority explained Western global pre-eminence, a view taken seriously by almost no one who’s taken seriously"
Actually, what Guns, Germs, and Steel did, was to provide a first comprehensive theory (that I have heard of, anyway) that explains why Europe, and not someone else, rose to dominance. This is the merit. The main merit is not that it, as a side product, discredited the racially based theories.
Failing to understand this difference does not speak highly of the writer of the review.
[1] http://www.columbia.edu/~saw2156/HunterBlatherer.pdf