I wrote a long critique of this book during my navigation of the 3 Gorges on my second trip to China sometime between 2002 and 2005, but I cannot find it. Here are some of the points I remember:

1. What hinders Africa in the advancement of civilization is the tremendous biodiversity, which is partly or wholly a consequence of the fact that humans first evolved in Africa, and so species there had an opportunity to co-evolve resistance to us. That biodiversity, the warm climate plus our long history in Africa, which has allowed African pathogens the longest time to adapt to us, are the main causes that diseases are most prevalent in Africa. Those diseases have prevented urban agglomerations (cities) as effective ways to live in Africa. Cities, due to specialization of labor, have led to the greatest advancements in civilization. Thus, whereas Diamond argues that the lack of useful crops and domesticable animals hindered Africa, I argue it's the opposite: the richness of biodiversity in Africa, that has hindered its development.

2. When you list a zillion reasons for a phenomenon, only a few are likely to be significant --most reasons are just not equally important in their magnitude so others get drowned.

3. The lack of domestication of 'substitute' animals (e.g. zebra for riding as horses), which Diamons uses to argue that luck, manifested in the availability of domesticable species locally, is one of the main reasons for the speed of development in different continents, is likely influenced by the fact that we've already domesticated those we have. Domesticating horses probably took many generations of selection, and people are unlikely to do the same once that has been achieved with another similar animal. Diamond's claim of the zebra as undomesticable has been proven wrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Domestication).