When Mitt Romney got into hot water earlier this week discussing the differences between Israeli and Palestinian “culture,” one of the books he cited was Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel.
On Thursday, Diamond took to the pages of The New York Times to say Romney’s quote that it “basically says physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there,” is so different from what the book actually says that “I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it.”
The piece ends with something of a wordy slap: "Mitt Romney may become our next president. Will he continue to espouse one-factor explanations for multicausal problems, and fail to understand history and the modern world? If so, he will preside over a declining nation squandering its advantages of location and history."
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