While this book isn't as exceptional and comprehensive as Diamond's two previous books (Collapse; and Guns, Germs, and Steel), The World Until Yesterday is still a valuable, fair comparison of traditional (hunter/gatherer) and modern (agricultural/industrial) societies. While it doesn't contain many new insights, and some of the personal annecdotes can be somewhat prolix and tedious, it's still an informative distillation of his previous books. Diamond makes a convincing argument that there are significant attributes and liabilities of both traditional and modern societies: By incorporating some traditional practices into our societies, we moderns would greatly improve our mental and physical health.

This book is so misleading and racist that it compelled Papuan leaders to demand an apology from the author.

Negative rating due to lack of scholarship. (Yeah...yeah....yeah...I realize Diamond was awarded the Pulitzer, as other submediocrities from time to time are awarded it, but Diamond should stick with what he's best at, writing the introductions to hedge fund books!) One would be much better served reading the far superior social/economic anthropologist, Prof. Joseph Tainter.

Somewhat uneven, but it does provide a glimpse of some traditional societies (particularly in New Guinea) and what they have to offer "modern" people. I found the chapters on war, justice and avoiding danger the most interesting. The ones on child-rearing and diet contained less that was new to me; the one on religion was far more abstract than the rest of the book.