> Diamond's one of the list's favourites, isn't he?

I'm no fan of Diamond, I don't consider his work very valuable 

He just formed his viewpoints and took out selected evidence to say why he felt such a way. His entire point of writing Guns, Germs and Steel wasn't a critique on "civilization" at all, it was supposedly debunking the myths of white supremacy. It was a couple of decades if not centuries late...  

His extremely dogmatic stance that intelligence is exactly equal among all races, but then contradicting himself by making claims that people from New Guinea are actually a lot more intelligent than himself, is pathetic and betrays a lack of scientific understanding, anecdotal evidence and ugh... really just nonsense.