阅读此本书的理由：

1，极为经典的书；很多观点振聋发聩。

2，记得10年前读过，当时觉得太难，就放弃了。十年后，觉得英语有进步，再次挑战。

3，从沿海、相对思维前卫的城市，搬回武汉，也需要精神支柱。

进度：0%-4%

今日阅读总体感受：

1，被作者抽丝剥茧般的分析问题，一步步锁定问题的核心所感染。

2，社会里的很多偏见，无从反驳，甚至默默内化成自己的，用社会学严谨力量回应，感觉很有趣。

3，那个寻找问题的答案，不是为了合理化问题，而是找到问题的网络线，在合适地方切断。震撼。

Good word usages:

1, groundbreaking （/ˈɡraʊndbreɪkɪŋ/）

原文例句： “Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so….

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 2). Kindle 版本.

原文形容思想的开拓性

例句：a groundbreaking piece of research

2, radiate (/ˈreɪdieɪt/)

原文例句：Yali radiated charisma and energy. His eyes flashed in a mesmerizing way.

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 17). Kindle 版本.

原文形容一个人散发着光芒一般

更多例句：He radiated self-confidence and optimism.

the energy that seemed to radiate from her

3， impending (/ɪmˈpendɪŋ/)

原文例句：In addition to these current political and economic reverberations of past collisions among peoples, there are current linguistic reverberations—especially the impending disappearance of most of the modern world’s 6,000 surviving languages, becoming replaced by English, Chinese, Russian, and a few other languages whose numbers of speakers have increased enormously in recent centuries.

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 21). Kindle 版本.

原文形容，很多需要消失得之快

（提醒原文句子，但是表达真心精妙，可以做做语法分析, there be 句型为主干，外加一个超长铺垫，以及复合句
reverberation，回响--似乎用得不多，不做多的了解）。

更多例句：

his impending retirement

warnings of impending danger/disaster

4， unfold /ʌnˈfəʊld/

原文例句：The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents?

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 12). Kindle 版本.

原文形容：历史的展开方式。非常实用的词，而且让语言十分有质感。

更多例句：The audience watched as the story unfolded before their eyes.

Dramatic events were about to unfold.

She unfolded her tale to us.

Good Sentences:

1, ALTHOUGH YALI’S QUESTION concerned only the contrasting lifestyles of New Guineans and of European whites, it can be extended to a larger set of contrasts within the modern world.

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 18). Kindle 版本.

好的理由：很棒的concession，形容原本是比较新几内亚和欧洲的生活，但是可以拓展到更广阔的世界。

也就是我们俗称的，做些许让步。同时也可以引出将话题眼神更广。

2, Many of the living descendants of those Aborigines who survived the era of European colonization are now finding it difficult to succeed economically in white Australian society.

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 24). Kindle 版本.

很多原住民后代尽管逃脱了欧洲殖民，但是依然发现当今时代很难再经济社会立足。

好的理由：

1）对比古今，通过who定语从句，描述古代的情况，用主句描写现代的情况。

2）用我们初中就学过的结构，find sth. adj. 配合句子其他成分，变得十分有说服力，主客体很好。

Thought-Provoking paragraphs

1，狭隘看待历史，对每个人的危害

理由1: 欧洲历史只是人类历史的一小部分；

理由2:“文明”历史，也来源于“不文明”的过去；

理由3: 强大要素的根源在哪里

Such narrowly focused accounts of world history suffer from three disadvantages. 

First, increasing numbers of people today are, quite understandably, interested in other societies besides those of western Eurasia. After all, those “other” societies encompass most of the world’s population and the vast majority of the world’s ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups. Some of them already are, and others are becoming, among the world’s most powerful economies and political forces.

Second, even for people specifically interested in the shaping of the modern world, a history limited to developments since the emergence of writing cannot provide deep understanding. It is not the case that societies on the different continents were comparable to each other until 3,000 B.C., whereupon western Eurasian societies suddenly developed writing and began for the first time to pull ahead in other respects as well. Instead, already by 3,000 B.C., there were Eurasian and North African societies not only with incipient writing but also with centralized state governments, cities, widespread use of metal tools and weapons, use of domesticated animals for transport and traction and mechanical power, and reliance on agriculture and domestic animals for food. Throughout most or all parts of other continents, none of those things existed at that time; some but not all of them emerged later in parts of the Native Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, but only over the course of the next five millennia; and none of them emerged in Aboriginal Australia. That should already warn us that the roots of western Eurasian dominance in the modern world lie in the preliterate past before 3,000 B.C. (By western Eurasian dominance, I mean the dominance of western Eurasian societies themselves and of the societies that they spawned on other continents.) 

Third, a history focused on western Eurasian societies completely bypasses the obvious big question. Why were those societies the ones that became disproportionately powerful and innovative? The usual answers to that question invoke proximate forces, such as the rise of capitalism, mercantilism, scientific inquiry, technology, and nasty germs that killed peoples of other continents when they came into contact with western Eurasians. But why did all those ingredients of conquest arise in western Eurasia, and arise elsewhere only to a lesser degree or not at all?

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (pp. 13-14). Kindle 版本.

2，寻找到很多原本对某些个体/群体不利环境出现的原因，才是根治所在，才能更好帮助他们

This objection rests on a common tendency to confuse an explanation of causes with a justification or acceptance of results. What use one makes of a historical explanation is a question separate from the explanation itself. Understanding is more often used to try to alter an outcome than to repeat or perpetuate it. That’s why psychologists try to understand the minds of murderers and rapists, why social historians try to understand genocide, and why physicians try to understand the causes of human disease. Those investigators do not seek to justify murder, rape, genocide, and illness. Instead, they seek to use their understanding of a chain of causes to interrupt the chain.

Jared M. Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel (p. 22). Kindle 版本.