Guns, Germs, and Steel -- Take 2

Despite, my best efforts, I'm not sure I gave Guns, Germs, and Steel the attention I (and J) said I should have.  I tried!  I think this is maybe a book better read than listened to, since then you're less likely to be doing something else as well.

Regardless, I did enjoy it.  I think I even got a few nuggets of wisdom out of it, though I do not consider myself expert enough to judge the quality of the arguments the author made.

Diamond starts out his history with broad history of the settlement of peoples, specifically on their domestication of plants and development of agriculture.  He makes an interesting point about the spread of various domesticated plant species across land masses with broad latitudes but limited longitudes (for example, the Eurasian pan-continent), while masses oriented longitudinally (Africa, the Americas) experienced a much more limited spread of species due to the variability in climate.  The same is largely true for technological developments.  Domestication of animals also played a role in how large a developing society became.  He ends with an analysis of the different structures and sizes societies can take: band, tribe, chiefdom, or state.

PBS did a television special based on the book, and also has a website full of interesting information here. 

I now face a dilemma: I also have his book Collapse on audio.  Do I listen to it, knowing I will probably have the same issue with attention, or do I read it, knowing that I may never get around to it?