- Charlie Munger One of two Diamond titles on the list, and a working example of the multidisciplinary explanation Munger kept demanding — geography, biology and history used together rather than one discipline defending its territory. source ↗
Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning answer to the question of why Eurasian civilizations conquered rather than being conquered: geography, domesticable animals, and the east-west axis of the continents, not racial superiority, explain the broad patterns of human history.
Diamond's book sits on Munger's recommended list as a working example of the multidisciplinary explanation Munger demanded — geography, biology, and history used together rather than one discipline defending its territory. For founders, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a model of how to answer 'why did X win?' without resorting to tautology (they won because they were better) or hero narratives (they won because of one great leader). Diamond traces causation through multiple independent channels, which is exactly the approach Munger recommended for analyzing why a business succeeds or fails: look for the converging forces, not the single cause.