A review by tessaays
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

3.0

Though parts of this book have REALLY not aged well, that’s not why I’m giving it three stars. A really interesting premise, let down by a complete lack of direction. Rather than working out what he was actually trying to SAY in this book, Diamond appears to have looked at a few large piles of interesting research papers on his desk and thought “I could write a book with a chapter on each of these topics and see what happens”. There is absolutely no continuity to the ideas. Also, a few of his hypotheses are frankly bizarre. The entire chapter devoted to understanding why humans consume “toxic chemicals” (he means drugs and alcohol.. not sure that the evidence is totally in his favour there also) seems to have completely overlooked the fact that a) in many cases they are addictive (yes, he really only mentions this once in the entire chapter) and b) that they are pleasurable - we consume them for the same reason that we don’t all exist on soylent. Sure they provide no “survival” benefit, but neither does any food that goes beyond caloric requirements. What a hand-wringing waste of a chapter.
Having said all this - it got better towards the end, and some chapters were super interesting (always in isolation though). I think I will still read Guns, Germs and Steel, but mostly to see whether it’s any more coherent than this one.