'That's so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr Romney read it'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/jared-diamond-mitt-romney_n_1732559.html

Jared Diamond: Mitt Romney 'Misrepresented My Views'


Scientist and author Jared Diamond said that Mitt Romney mischaracterized his book, "Guns, Germs and Steel," to theorize why Israelis and Palestinians have such vastly different levels of economic development at a fundraiser in Jerusalem Sunday.

He said that Romney gives a false description of the book by stating that it "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," he wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday. He also said that he focused mostly on "biological features" and there was no mention about iron ore in the book.

Diamond is a bestselling author and UCLA professor. "Guns, Germs and Steel," published in 1997, has sold over 1.5 million copies and sparked a PBS series.

He said that the other author Romney cited, Harvard economist David Landes, would find Romney's thesis that culture accounts for economic differences "dangerously out of date."