Jared Diamond: Romney Mischaracterized My Work

Jared Diamond: Romney Mischaracterized My Work

Author Jared Diamond argues that Mitt Romney’s controversial comments about Israeli culture, which featured a reference to his own book, misrepresent his work in a New York Times op-ed Thursday. Diamond sets the record straight with a brief summer of his own thesis, arguing that both geography and culture play a role in a nation’s successes.

In Israel, Romney said that the country’s culture accounts for its economic success, which he then juxtaposed to the economy of Palestine. Romney contrasts this cultural emphasis with Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” which he says “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”

“That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it,” Diamond writes in his op-ed. “My focus was mostly on biological features, like plant and animal species, and among physical characteristics, the ones I mentioned were continents’ sizes and shapes and relative isolation. I said nothing about iron ore, which is so widespread that its distribution has had little effect on the different successes of different peoples. (As I learned this week, Mr. Romney also mischaracterized my book in his memoir, ‘No Apology: Believe in America.’)”

Diamond ends with another Romney rebuke.


http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/jared-diamond-romney-mischaracterized-my-work

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I'm reminded of an anecdote the Wall Street Journal recently published.


In reality, this exchange between Reagan and Baker never happened. I don't know who told Romney this or whether Romney simply made it up out of whole cloth, but Reagan dealt with plenty of national-security meetings early in his presidency -- as all presidents do.

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http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/01/13073227-he-didnt-forget-poland-but-he-skipped-afghanistan