The NYT link has most of the peer reviews praising his work on going through centuries of economic data, but rejecting his notion that it's related to genes.
As for the Time link:
Do Chinese carry genes for conformism and authoritarian rule? May Europeans have alleles that favor open societies and the rule of law? Obviously this is unlikely to be the case.
Similarly, West African genes (as in genetically more or less the same sort of black people as your slave descendents) do not carry genes for criminal behavior, being Muslim, joining drug gangs, being welfare cheats or similar values that would make building civilization impossible. Remember that there were kings, aristocracy and quite extensive empires in parts of Western Africa once. And again, look at the earlier difference between rate of higher education among African immigrants to the US compared "native" black Americans' rate of higher education. Do genetic differences exist? Sure. I believe there's a tiny tribe in Western Africa that have lived from diving after crabs for - not even many - thousands of years that they developed a gene that allows them perfect vision under water.
But civilization and genes? You are, as you've pointed out so many times "Anglo". Your ancestors, like mine, were living in dung-and straw covered huts when Semitic peoples and their linguistic cousins in Nubia were developing or copying each other's writing, developing bureacracies and advanced forms of government. If civilization is genetic, North Europeans must be late bloomers. We only got civilized after the Romans copied the Greeks, who copied the Minoans, who copied the Egyptians who copied the Sumerians. And it wasn't untill the Industrialization that we really took over. Compare that to West Africa. They didn't have industrialization two hundred years ago. They now have a GDP growth greater than Asia, and a relatively stable government, and rising literacy rates.
Over two hundred years. Or less. So, still genetics.... not a good argument for why one people might not be compatible with another or why one would not be at the same level. The West African rate of growth compared to the European one... is mind numbingly fast.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.