Black Elk Speaks v. Guns Germs and Steel

For my college freshman orientation program, the first book I was assigned to read in college was Black Elk Speaks. I wrote a post about Black Elk Speaks a few days ago.

I have had a nagging urge to remember something and I remembered what I was trying to remember just now.

My daughter also had an orientation at college. I believe the transfer students, which she was, and freshman all read the same book:  Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.

I remember recoiling in my being at the book Guns Germs and Steel. I considered reading it, to have a sense of what my daughter was learning. I don't think she ever read it, actually. Some guy she was seeing just before she left for Ithaca found it fascinating.

1971:  as a college freshman, my first book was Black Elk Speaks

2001:  as a transfer student in orientation, my daughter, all the new transfers and all the freshman were assigned Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.

I don't think I could read a book called Guns Germs and Steel even if I were paid a hundred dollars a word. I suspect the name tells me all I need to know:  guns, germs and steel have shaped human civilization.

Black Elk Speaks offered a way forward. Guns Germs and Steel seemed wrong to me.  I wonder why my daughter's college chose the book it chose. I thought the choice did not bode well for my child.

I am grateful I went to a university that had all its freshman read Black Elk Speaks. We also watched an Ingmar Bergman film during our freshman studies program, my introduction to foreign film.