You will probably appreciate our mod /u/anthropology_nerd 's extensive posts about the American conquest narrative Diamond constructs.

The book's been written about several times around here, so I'll add another angle I haven't seen brought up: Diamond's research process is entirely unprofessional and unscientific.

Jared Diamond is not a historian, nor an archaeologist, nor even an anthropologist. He is a geographer, and with that comes a broad mindset. What he sets out to do in GG&S is not something anyone can do in a single book, let alone someone outside of the field who plans on writing more than one book in their lifetime. If you read a 20-page scholarly article about New World archaeology, you'll find that perhaps only the last one or two pages contain the interpretation and synthesis of the data, the "here's what this means/ so what?" conclusion. GG&S turns such a section into an entire book. A more professional investigation might go as such:

1. Here's a collapsed temple in the Andes; what was it for?/Here's a stash of lost letters to an advisor by Henry VIII; how did Henry VIII relate to his nobles?
2. Let's excavate this section of the temple and record everything we find!/Let's read every letter in detail and cross-reference every person and place mentioned!
3. Now let's read everything that other people have published and learned about this topic.
4. We discovered X, Y, and Z in the temple/letters. How does that relate to existing knowledge?
5. Having synthesized what we found with what we already knew, we can propose that this temple was used for this purpose by these people/that Henry VIII was more fond of this style of politics than this one.

The inspiration behind GG&S that Diamond writes in his into is as follows:

1. Huh! I notice the same thing might be said for a bunch of native peoples across the world ("What do the white have more "cargo" than us?")
2. That's an interesting trend! Why is it true?
3. Let me look through a whole array of existing research to find a reason for the thing I noticed.
4. Hey reader! Here's a thing I noticed and some facts I found that support it!

The entire research process is completely flipped from more reliable studies. It seeks facts to explain a theory, not a theory to explain observed facts. It's constructing a historical narrative and filling it in with the facts that you find, not arranging the facts in a narrative. Diamond's process hinges on the veracity of his initial assumption, which he does not seek to prove. Thankfully, his assumption is a falsifiable hypothesis, and you can see some falsifying being done in the /r/badhistory threads I linked to.

With his initial assumption gone, what remains to draw his historical anecdotes together? Nothing. The only thing connecting the information Diamond presents is that it supports his thesis.

Let's take a look at these two research processes in action.

The Diamond Method

• General observation: The helpless natives of the world are eternally suppressed by technologically advanced white people.
• Historical facts: The only kings named Phillip are from Eurasia or named by Europeans. Phillip II was the Macedon who conquered Greece, and his several descendant Phillips would rule Hellenistic empires. Philip I, Capetian King of the Franks, recovered much of the territory lost by his father, obviously not named Philip, but Henry. Of course, there's no evidence for a Sapa Inca Philip or a K'uh'ul Ajaw Philip (or any Philip!) in the Americas. And, guess who was king of Spain during the height of the conquest of Peru: Philip II!
• Conclusion: Philips have shown to be great conquerors throughout history. If the people of the New World had a Philip, maybe they could have conquered Europe!

The Actual Research Method

• Research question: Philip's a popular king name; why is it popular?
• Historical facts: (same as above) Except we also add the timid Philip III and the deposed final Seleucid, Philip II Philoromaeus.
• Theory: Philip's a Greek name; there was a famous Macedonian king with it earlier than the other kings. He was quite successful, so people started to like using it as a name.

As you can see, there is no way to get any other answer than the one you started with when using Diamond's method, assuming your assumption is broad enough. Diamond literally has the entire history of human occupation of every continent to draw evidence from; of course he can manage to support a thesis. It doesn't even matter whether his facts are right (he's pretty hit or miss), the research process he so boldly describes is not worth teaching in a classroom.

The answer you will get here is "none".

Diamond takes a totally different approach than anthropologists / historians. Part of the reason it is taught in schools is that it makes you look at things from this different perspective.

Diamond's main argument is that the environment is essential in pushing the cultures that live there along certain paths. Historians accuse him of cherry-picking facts or not allowing for individual human agency.

They are critical of it. Here is a past AskHistorians post about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mkcc3/how_do_modern_historians_and_history/

hi.. just spotted this post, and am surprised to find that, while the FAQ section on this book was mentioned, no-one linked to it

• Historians' views of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"