Jesse Prinz has probably the best critique of monogamy I've heard yet. You can think of every practice/ethic of the Catholic Church as a means to power - monogamy, the celibate priesthood (church's land stays in the church) the ban on birth control and abortion (younger sons and unmarried daughters work for the church), "meek shall inherit the earth" ("shut up, whiners").
I found Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel interesting, but the problem is that it ignores moral agency - his thesis is that Europeans have dominated the globe not because of any innate advantage, but simply because their geography allowed them to do so. Prinz's idea opens up a third possibility, that Europeans developed moral systems (not just technologies) which were particularly well-suited to global domination. I imagine it'd be a lot harder to tie these cultural developments to geography.
ed: bloggingheads link fixed
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