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Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. London : Vintage Random House, 1997.

Book review. This book is fun, informative, and presents a fascinating approach to the study of the human past. In an age when many historians reject the very possibility of writing over-arching "macrohistory," Diamond presents what he himself considers to be the ultimate in macrohistory, a history of all peoples in all places from the end of the last Ice Age, some 13,000 years ago, down to the present—in a paperback edition with just 425 pages of text! The reason the author thinks he can get away with such an outlandish claim (and, largely succeeds) is because of his approach and perspective, which is taken from the biological sciences. He treats the human past in its geographical and environmental settings, arguing that those settings provide historians with a set of ultimate explanations to the whole course of human history. Beginning with the problem of why Europe and North American have become the wealthiest and most powerful nations of the world, Diamond conducts an elaborate investigation of the geographical and environmental factors that allow some peoples to become dominant over others. His investigation starts with the description of the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific, showing how some groups prospered while others died away.

Proceeding in a question-and-answer fashion, the author concludes that some peoples were simply luckier than others. Diamond is insistent that the indigenous peoples of Australia or New Guinea are in no wise inferior to those of other races; they failed to become dominant peoples because of the geography and environment in which they live. He argues that the ultimate factor in human history is food production. Those peoples who produce the most food prosper because more food means increased population; and as their population increases they are able to develop the human and natural resources need to expand their power at the expense of other, less fortunate neighbors. Food production, in turn, depends on domesticating plants and animals both for eating, and in the case of larger domestic animals (such as the water buffalo), helping to intensify further food production. It turns out that there are

only a very small number of plants and animals suitable for domestication, and those peoples who lived in proximity to them in ancient times were the ones who prospered. The toss of the geographical coin especially favored the peoples of Mesopotamia who had an inordinately abundant number of species suitable for domestication.

Diamond especially points out how geography and environment favored the vast Eurasian continent in the development of powerful peoples. Eurasia is dominant partly because of its immense size, which allows the development of many cultures and the large populations needed for the emergence of the human inventiveness needed for people to take advantage of their geographical opportunities. Equally as important, the Eurasian geographical axis runs East-West, which means that plants and animals domesticated in one environment can expand across the mega-continent at roughly the same latitudes. The Americas suffer from having a North-South axis in which it is virtually impossible to transfer the domesticated plants and animals of one climate to the colder or hotter climates immediately to the north and south. Thus, the plants and animals domesticated in Mesopotamia expanded relatively quickly into Europe and northern Africa, which have roughly similar climates, while the Incas and Aztecs of the Americas did not even know of the existence of each other.

In the math of Diamond's geo-historical approach, domestication equals food equals power. Food production is the basis for all of civilization. It is no accident that writing, for example, appears where increased food production led to population growth, which in turn led to greater social and cultural complexity. Food producers were the ones who could thus develop the weapons and technology (Diamond's "Guns" and "Steel") needed to dominate other peoples, and they were the ones who became more immune through population density to the diseases ("Germs") that would eventually decimate smaller populations that lacked such immunity. The reason, thus, that Euro-American civilization now dominates the globe is because it is the direct descendant of the Fertile Crescent. Its peoples have benefited far more and far more directly than any others from the revolutions in plants and animal domestication and food production that began in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

Diamond's arguments are obviously more detailed and complex than this brief sketch of them even suggests, but even at that he sometimes leaves the reader breathless as he hops from continent to continent, era to era making the case for his geographical and environmental perspective on human history. One tries not to be sucked into the book's line of reasoning, but I have to admit that it is highly persuasive in many ways. The great majority of working historians, including yours' truly, tend to look at a much narrower range of factors, whether they be political, social, or religious. Diamond, by way of contrast, thinks of history as being one of the biological sciences and sees the explanations that the rest of us make for historical events as being only "proximate" causes. He acknowledges that certain historical figures have an impact on history, and he realizes that cultural differences between peoples also have an impact. At the "ultimate" level, however, food is power; and in order to gain the food necessary for power human societies need domestic plants and animals that suit their environments and which can be exported to adjoining areas. Thus, the Australian aborigines never had a chance to become a powerful people because Australia was virtually devoid of both plants and animals that could be domesticated. The one domesticated animal they had, the dingo, was a relatively late import from Asia. European settlers could easily defeat the aborigines in their totally one-sided battle for the continent because the settlers came from a complex culture that had the technology (guns and steel) and brought the diseases (germs) of a densely populated society needed to decimate the indigenous peoples. As always, Diamond insists that such peoples as the Australian aborigines are every bit as bright and creative as white Europeans. They simply had the bad luck to be lodged in the wrong environmental niche.

Guns, Germs and Steel is a highly personal book in spite of its sweeping intentions. The author has lived and worked for many years in New Guinea, and thus many of his examples and allusions have to do with that island. Sad to say, Diamond hardly realizes that Southeast or South Asia exist. In his catalogue of civilizations, for example, he never mentions the Khmer Civilization. India receives scant attention. The Pacific islanders, on the other hand, receive a good deal of attention, more than their place in world history would seem to warrant, because Diamond sees them as providing specific test cases for his theories.

Much more serious from my point of view is Diamond's failure to treat culture in general and religion in particular as factors in human history. He claims that geographical and environmental factors provide the ultimate explanation for the course of human history, yet he is not actually able to account for why within a given environment one village takes better advantage of its situation than another village nearby. One sees this on the rice plains of Chiang Mai where two communities, right next to each other are still markedly different in income levels and quality of life (regarding, for example, the incidence of drugs and AIDS). Why did Rome emerge as powerful village, then town, then city, then kingdom, and finally empire? Or, again, how does one account for the vast cultural and religious influence of Greece, a small and not particularly fertile peninsula that could fight the great Persian Empire to a standstill?

Diamond attempts, as an example of the limitations of his geographical explanation, to show that Europe is geographically better off than China because where China has been subject to the whims of one central government for thousands of years, it is all but impossible to unite Europe even today. He cites the example of sea faring. While the Chinese government suspended sea-faring activities in the 1430s, Columbus was able to go from European country until he finally found one, Spain, that was willing to finance his voyage to the West (pages 412-413). Diamond makes it sound as if it was inevitable that a divided Europe would sail the seas while a united China would not—as if someone was going to inevitably back Columbus, an assumption that is impossible to prove. In fact, it was never certain that Spain was actually going to finance his trip until the final decision was made.

The author is particularly remiss in his attitude towards religion, which is clearly negative and all but dismissive. We are particularly aware of the power of religion today, but religion has always played an important role in human affairs; and it is difficult to make any correlation between environment and religion. Diamond, in any event, does not try, and he apparently sees religion as only being a mechanism for augmenting power.

The central weakness in Diamond's presentation, as apt and appealing as it is generally, is in his assertion that his geo-historical approach provides ultimate

explanations to the course of human history. The assertion is nonsense if for no other reason that he begins his own tale many hundreds of thousands of years after the human species emerged and spread across important parts of the globe. If we want to discuss the "ultimate" course of human history, then we need to find out why we have an opposable digit, the thumb, and why we are omnivores. We need to talk about the advantages of hunting in packs and being able to move on two legs so that our other two "legs" are free for other uses. If, in fact, we want to search out the true ultimate causes of the course of human history, we need to discover the very reason for being of the universe itself.

Diamond does not provide us with ultimate explanations, however many times he uses the term. Rather, he presents what is best termed macrohistory, the study of the overarching, major factors in human history. He is right on when he points out the massive importance of geography and environment as one of the key factors in human history, but he is wrong in trying to assign ultimate significance to these factors. There is still a great deal he cannot explain because a good deal of what happens in our lives is not directly related to geographical factors.

In northern Thai church history, for example, geography and environment have certainly had their impact. Those factors explain, for example, why Protestant missionaries did not begin work in the North until quite late in the game. They also explain why the Presbyterian Laos Mission was divided into several semi-autonomous stations, each located in the major city of a fertile valley surrounded by mountains. Geography does not explain, however, the impact of Old School Presbyterian theological thinking on missionary behavior and their evangelistic and ecclesiastical strategies in the North. It does not explain why there is a strong church in one rural community of Lamphun Province while the church has disappeared completely from other communities in that same province. That is to say, sometimes the macro-historical factors of geography, food production, and climatic conditions have little relative impact on actual events. At other times, they have a massive impact.

Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, in sum, reminds us in a forceful, useful fashion of the importance of geographical, biological, and environmental factors in

human history—especially when we are dealing with global developments over centuries of time. My sense is that he has overstated his case somewhat and that the Euro-American dominance of the planet since the nineteenth century was not as inevitable as he claims. As a layman when it comes to many of his arguments, I am left feeling a little uneasy as to whether some of them are actually valid or not. He claims for example that some species are more easily domesticated than others, which seems logical; but one wonders if the fact that some species of plants or animals have not yet been domesticated is actually proof that they cannot be—as he seems to think. Yet, it also seems undeniable that the history of human food production has given some peoples large advantages over others and that, often times, the peoples so advantaged have responded in innovative, inventive ways to actually take advantage of their situation. We need to leave some room, however, for serendipity, for pure chance, for inspiration, and for creative genius even at the macro-level.

Given his flaws and a certain level of hubris in his claims, I would still strongly recommend Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel to the readers of HeRB. It is a well written, tightly argued approach to the study of the human past that deserves critical reflection.

Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.

Book review. Although it is a book on American religious and cultural history, Prothero's American Jesus raises a number of broader questions concerning the relationship of Christian faith to culture and presents a useful concept, the icon, for analysis of that relationship. The book itself is a study in the development of popular images of Jesus in the United States, the author's argument being that Jesus has become the central figure, or "icon," in American religion. He now belongs to all Americans, not just those who consider themselves Christians. Prothero contends that it is nearly impossible to live in the United States without coming to terms with Jesus, and he demonstrates how even the most disparate groups, including American Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists, have all more or less assimilated Jesus into their religious faith. Prothero also argues, however, that Americans have long been busy creating

and re-creating Jesus in their own images. Those images are always changing as American culture and sub-cultures change; in some eras Jesus is a highly feminized individual, in others he is a "best friend," and in still other periods he is a manly, macho tough guy.

Prothero credits (or faults, as the case may be) nineteenth-century liberal Protestants with playing a key role in transforming Jesus into America 's national icon. The "modernists" were increasingly uneasy with Christian dogma and increasingly critical of the traditional views of the Bible; and they were the ones who began to de-biblicize and de-deify Jesus, transforming him into an independent religious figure who actually lived, taught, died, and was resurrected. The result has been a massive American literature about Jesus, countless paintings and poems devoted to him, and a huge hymnology epitomized by "What a Friend we have in Jesus"; and while Americans drew on European writers and artists as well as their own, the market for selling Jesus was and is far, far stronger in America than Europe or elsewhere. Perhaps most telling is the manner in which Americans of other faiths have re-fashioned Jesus to fit their religious tradition. American Jews, particularly Reformed Jews, in the last half of the nineteenth century discovered that the "real Jesus" was a Jew, a rabbi, a teacher of Jewish wisdom. Material about him was included in Jewish religious instruction. American Hindus, as another example cited by Prothero, rediscovered a more gnostic view that emphasized Jesus' divinity, his oneness with the Divine. In the case of both Hindus and Jews, a considerable number of thinkers came to believe that they "knew Jesus" better than Christians. They distinguished the "religion of Jesus" from the "religion about Jesus," and argued that the so-called Christians have been tricked by Paul and their own traditions into believing in a false Jesus.

American Jesus is a cultural history. As such, the author draws on a wide variety of sources not usually associated with church or religious history. There is a long section about the history and influence of Sallman's "Head of Christ." The well-known Jesus musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, are given their due consideration. Prothero's chapter on Mormon conceptions of Jesus is fascinating and informative. Throughout his narrative, Prothero focuses on popular images of Jesus so that the reader learns something about popular American religious literature, art,

Prothero never loses touch thus with his main arguments, which are straightforward but insightful. Jesus is an American icon. But, he is an icon created in the image of Americans, be they Protestant or Catholic, Mormon or Jewish, Black or Asian.

The subject of American images of Jesus is a massive subject to cover in a book of 300 pages, and Prothero himself recognizes that he could write another book on the subject using almost entirely another set of data and examples. Yet, he has managed his subject expertly. His prose is perhaps slightly "trendy," but not offensively or inappropriately so. He has his footnotes in place and his bibliography well alphabetized, but the academic paraphernalia does not get in the way of his story. One could wish, perhaps, for more illustrations as Prothero refers to numerous paintings that are not included in the illustrations, but this is a minor complaint at most. The book makes an important contribution to American religious thought. It is by turns though provoking, amusing, and enlightening.

Suppose one was to write a comparable book on Thai religious thought, particularly with Thai Christianity in mind, what would one write about? Is there a national Thai religious icon comparable to Jesus as an American icon? Keeping in mind the many differences between Thailand and the United States, I think it is possible to argue that there is a parallel national religious icon here in Thailand, namely the King (and, by extension the royal family). It is certainly not the Buddha even though Thai Buddhists obviously treat the Buddha as a religious icon much more self-consciously than the way Americans treat Jesus as a national religious icon. Thai Christians and Muslims, however, strongly reject the Buddha and Buddha images so that the Buddha does not function as a trans-religious national icon. Muslims and Christians, however, largely share in the deep devotion and loyalty of all Thais for the King. And, wherever one goes in Thailand, one sees the King daily—on coins, currency, calendars, in the theaters, in all public buildings and most public spaces, on TV, in the news. There is a massive literature about the King and the royal family,

Now, whether or not various groups in Thailand re-create the King in their own image is more problematic. It would be fascinating to see if tribal peoples or urban Thai-Chinese, Muslims or Christians, have different images of the King. I remain convinced largely on the basis of personal observation, in any event, that one cannot understand the Thai Christian conceptions of God apart from the King of Thailand. Prothero is insistent that to be an American means to have an opinion, almost invariably laudatory, of Jesus. By the same token, to be a Thai means to have "an opinion, almost invariably laudatory," about the King, and Christians share fully in this national icon, which it can be argued is much more of a religious than secular or political icon.

In a Thai context, then, Prothero's American Jesus is value for at least two reasons. Generally, it offers a model for studying popular religion. In particular, it elucidates the helpful concept of a "national religious icon." In the narrower context of Thai Christianity, Prothero suggests that it is all but inevitable that Christians will share important religious images with the larger culture. What those images might be and how they influence Thai Christianity faith are matters warranting a great deal of further investigation.