Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

· W. W. Norton & Company
4.3
309 reviews
Ebook
528
Pages

About this ebook

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

Ratings and reviews

4.3
309 reviews
A Google user
September 11, 2007
The author makes the argument that the differences in the worlds development of human societies is largely due to the geographic differences of the continents. Eurasia which has the largest stretch of land (in particular in homogeneous climate) had key advantages for the human species: 1. A larger selection of domesticable plants and animals. 2. Larger number of competing societies and therefore higher probability that progress (such as plant domestication) is propagated to the whole continent. Australia, the Americas and Africa had a poor collection of domesticable animals (after these had been extinct by human after the last ice age). On these continents innovations propagated much slower due to geographical and climatical reasons. Due to the development of food production based on domesticated animals Eurasians developed diseases (germs) which evolved from the life close to animals and eventually developed defenses. These germs eventually killed the largest part of the American natives, who had not developed the defenses. Since the American natives had not developed animal based germs European's were not harmed by foreign germs. The book also talks about the development of large societies and states eventually, which was caused by increase in food production, the population growth, and increasing complexity of society.
Jayson Reid
August 29, 2015
My son, a lover of history, is required to read this as part if his freshman curriculum. Apparently the author is suffering from an inferiority complex as his writing style indicates that he is putting the utmost effort in sounding intelligent. There are good points made but they are so convoluted and over written that by the time one reads a paragraph, you realize that you could have made the same point more clearly and coherently with about half the text. Horrible choice for curriculum reading.
Mark Zebley
November 15, 2014
Sure, my adoration of history may have made me a touch biased, but still - I can honestly say this was one of the greatest books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It wasn't just informative, but also infinitely readable. I couldn't put it down and was learning new things with every single page turned. 100% recommended.
1 person found this review helpful

About the author

Jared Diamond is professor of geography at UCLA and author of the best-selling Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee. He is a MacArthur Fellow and was awarded the National Medal of Science.

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