In an earlier post you stated, "I applaud Guns-germs-Steel (the man not the book which I've never been able to read)...".  By "never been able to read", do you mean that you tried to read the book, disliked it, and stopped reading or do you mean that you haven't found the opportunity to read it?

National Geographic produced a video documentary version with narrations and expedition footage from the author Jared Diamond.  If you are in a time crunch, the documentary does an excellent job of covering the relative points in the book and you can get a detailed sense of the research Diamond put into the book.  If you do read the book, the documentary makes an excellent companion.  It gave me the sense of knowing Jared Diamond, the kind of thinker he is, and the humanity the man developed in the course of his research and expeditions.  

In 2006 "Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed" was released.  I'm itching to read it.

Do you know of any contemporaries with perhaps an alternate view to Diamonds and the title(s) of their work(s)?

I am pleasantly surprised to find such a posting here.  Thank you for blowing away the stereotype that all on TER a mindless, sex-crazed people.  I think Jared Diamond is one the most important author/scientists of this generation.  Everyone should at least get a summary of his and his conclusions.  It is great ammunition for mental jousting with bigots and American "exceptionalists".

Back when Guns Germs and Steel was the rage, I read some very scathing critiques of it by several authors in North America, whom I happened to regard highly at the time.

Maybe some day I will check it out.

I tried to read collapse, but in the same way that Michael Pollan's recent books are interesting, but not quite revelatory, I have a hard time agreeing with Diamonds scope of focus. Actually, in both collapse and "The ominivores dillema" my mind stopped paying attention the moment cattle ranching became the excessive focus (which is the very beginning in collapse). I know I should get over it, and read about the ranches....

Anyways...

I will give it a shot some day when my already mountainous reading list is whittled down.

Right now I'm reading Brian Alexander's "Unzipped" which is an entertaining and semi-interesting look into American Sexuality; Patrick Cockburn's book on the Occupation of Iraq, and Octavia Butler's "Adulthood Rites". And then there's the magazines that I subscribe too, which I never find time to read all the way through.

The focus on cattle isn't for the cattle's direct role, but rather the indirect role in human social evolution.  People couldn't develop settled existences until they domesticated livestock and crops.  Certain geographic areas had neither animals with domesticatable temperments and breeding habits, no harvestable native vegetation, or lacked soil and climatic conditions allowing domestication or harvesting.  Without the domestication of animals and harvesting, you cannot develop settled societies.  Without settled societies and domesticated animals, you do not have the population density to expose the population to a variety of pathogens (germs) and hence do not develop the immunity to a vast number of diseases or a generally stronger immune system.  Without the settlement, you don't have a stratified society where specialized labor can flourish and hence do not develop specialized classes (warriors, soldiers,  artisans, etc.) responsible for creating and utilizing the weapons(guns) and technology(steel).  Domestication of cattle is the spark that sets the chain reaction.  People of societies with human population density (ex: Incas) but not animal density never profited from exposure to the variety of germs animals subject humans to.

Your reading habits remind me a bit of myself. I have a corner of my bedroom wall lined with books I bought with the best of intentions.  I used to travel to flea markets and thrift stores and for a piddly 10 cents to a dollar each buy loads of books that interested me at the time.  I would start reading one from the current crop, maybe another, then the focus of my interest would change as I read things that influenced my thinking and created new lines of interest and inquiry.  Amongst my vast library are copies of things like, "The Vicar of Wakefield", "Short Stories Of O Henry", and the book that is for sale at 30 or so percent of all flea market tables, "Futureshock".  It's doubtful I'll ever read them or their like, but sometimes knowing I'm touching knowledge is at least as third as exciting as gaining knowledge. It's like touching a religious icon.

One of the first hookers I knew well personally was a PhD candidate in Chinese philosophy.  Several of the hookers I knew well liked to gain knowledge, but often it was for the purpose of impressing others or for mastery of trivia.  Lots of dilettantes that didn't care about thinking or knowledge, they just cared about being smarter than others.  They wanted to be thought of as the witty one at the cocktail party.

Eight Eurocentric Historians by Blaut criticizes Diamond for geographical determinism. Victor Hanson also argues that culture can trump geography. Basically, some people think that geography is not everything: the Arab countries in the middle east are technologically poor, but Israel in the same area is rich.

Hanson's book is Carnage and culture.