Writing Feedback / Describe a book that you believe is the most useful to you. The essay of TOEFL. [4]

Describe a book that you believe is the most useful to you. Please explain the reason and include specific examples and details in your explanation.

I believe Jared Demon's book, "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies", is the most useful book to me. It is a book discussing about how the world result in what it is now. Just as the title said, the key to the answer to this question are the guns, germs and steel. Although Africa is the origin of the human being as well as one of the nine agriculture origins, it is the most uncivilized place in the world now. On the other hand, some of the places-such as the USA, the Europe-are the latest places which the human being appear, they are the richest place now.

The reason why this book is the most useful to me is that it has great influence on my perspective to every question or issue. Due to Jared Demon's way he solved at this question is so wide that he not only took advantage of history knowledge, but also used the bio-geology, humanology, I suddenly realized that by virtue of learning knowledge of many different fields, we can view the question deeper and more comprehensive, just like the author.

The most impressive part of this book is in the chapter seven, where the author was explaining about the agriculture different advantages and disadvantages of the nine agriculture origins. At the moment he referred to them, I could only come up with two main factors, climate and landform. Against all expectations, he pointed out what matters most is the time how it needs to subdue the plants and the crops. If the plants and the crops of a region need too much time to subdue, it will make all the difference to the development between this region and others, which means when other regions have already got into the industrial time, you are still working on subduing your plants and crops. By the time when you finally finish subduing them, other regions have already prepared to conquer you.

As a whole, this book is really a classic. It comes as no surprise that this book won the Pulitzer Prize. Had it not been for it, perhaps I would be stuck in my narrow thought. Because of it, I will do my utmost trying to view the things in various perspectives and study more knowledge in many different kinds of fields. In conclusion, it is important to be an independent, comprehensive thinker.