What an awful book. I don't know why I bothered to finish it. The historical fiction I like best adds something to how I view historical figures. This novel was so far-fetched that I couldn't get into it.
In addition to the absurdity of the plot, every character has serious daddy issues. The modern storyline features a guy everyone is keeping a secret from about his brother's mysterious death. The big mystery? Turns out he was depressed and probably killed himself. I don't understand why it was in the story at all.
I couldn't finish this book fast enough, just to be done with it. A huge waste of time.

Normally, books about evolution by people who aren't evolutionary biologists, are lacking some rigor. All kinds of assumptions are made, and many assumptions, such as inheritance, are ignored. This one was actually pretty good- the explanations for diseases are sensible hypotheses and are well backed up by data.
An interesting book about disease. I had never really thought about disease perhaps as a beneficial and therefore selected for traits.

This book was really nothing but preaching to the choir, but I couldn't really tell who it was written for. It certainly wasn't going to convince any creationists (even if they would read it, which they wouldn't), but it won't be interesting for people like me, either. The wide range of contributors was probably chosen to show the scientific consensus for evolution, but I was just wondering why a theologian and physicist, psychologist, etc, are weighing in. It seemed more like This I Believe, a book I really disliked. Too much personal opinion and too little actual science.

I remember playing one of the lawyers when we did this as a school play. It was quite enjoyable.

I didn't actively listen to a lot of this book. I checked in and out for parts that I was interested in. Initially I thought it would bea good book to recommend to my evolution students. There were lots of the concepts we teach in that class, such as effective population size, drift, and selection. I woner if these concepts were explained well enough for non-evolution people.
Lots of reviewers had problems with the explanations of race. I think some of what he proposes might make sense if people didn't immediately reject any notion of a biological basis for race. However, he does not discuss the issue of accuracy of IQ tests or of cultural influences enough for me to reject them in favor of his hypothesis.
Towards the end, he makes projections of human evolution that only non-scientists make, and it made me question all of his science. Overall, not something I would recommend to anyone.

(In Progress)

Diamond's first work has most of the ideas that came to be his later books in a simpler form. Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse are books that build and develop the ideas that Diamond first put forth here. The ideas are improved from the further development but it is still interesting to see them in a simpler form.

I was pretty glad to be done with this book when I finished it. Maybe I'm just too familiar with the subject to be interested in yet another layman version of the evolution story. I think most laymen would be rather bored with this book, though. Usually I'm better at sticking with it than most people, but this one was a struggle.

It's tempting to look for the common themes in the biographies of six of the best scientists of all time. There didn't seem to be much in common, except that they were all obsessed with their work.
When you think about it though, there are plenty of people out there who are obsessed with their work that don't become famous or do great work.
This book was really interesting but really long as well. I was most impressed with Marie Curie's biography- mostly because she did amazing science while being female in a time when that didn't get you far at all, and she managed to raise her family as well.