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

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

Until around 11,000 b.c., all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.

The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.

He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.

Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA Medical School, is the author of The Third Chimpanzee, awarded the 1992 Los Angeles Times Science Book Award. He is a regular contributor to Natural History and Discover magazines and lives in Los Angeles.

What Customers Say About Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies:

I HATE FREAKIN AMAZON. Then, right after I order, the hardcover comes in stock. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH Man. I was waiting weeks for the hardcover edition to come into stock so I just decided to buy the paperback.

Diamond is a fine apologist for the self-hating descendants of Europeans who are in vogue on college campuses these days, but his thesis tells a very distorted and very shallow version of history. Instead of painting a historically complex picture (as genuine history tends to be), Diamond over plays the "location is everything" (geographical) argument, as if the geography argument answers every inequality amongst nations. If you have to have this book, a used copy will inflict the least pain. Jared Diamond's thesis is a product of the age we live in. He's more than happy to attribute negative values such as greed and avarice to European conquerors but certainly other cultural values, specially any that might be positive, play no role in Diamond's story.

But, that topic only covers about one or two pages and in no way damages the overall theme of his book (so I would suggest ignoring that point). Yes. Is Diamond's controversial suggestion that 'underdeveloped countries may produce smarter people because they have to be smarter just to survive' just plain dumb.

With all the reviews out there I won't go into detail except to say that this book covers very important principles that outline the general story of human history. Is it a little too repetative. Simply stated: This book is a must read.

Yes. Furthermore, to balance out this book with some additional views I would suggest reading 'The Central Liberal Truth' and 'Carnage and Culture' - these are NOT competing views - just additional perspectives on what can simply be described as the ultimate explanation of why some peoples/ cultures/ countries have survived/ dominated/ propogated and others have not.I highly recommend this book. Is it a little too long.

Yes.

The latter still seems intellectually fresh, despite its elaborate detail and minor errors in thinking. This may be a commonly held belief in some backwards social science departments, but has already been widely discredited. The authors tilting at this windmill is sometimes tedious.It's worth mentioning the contrast between this book and Darwin's Origin of Species. This book contains a number of fascinating historical stories and studies on the evolution of civilized society. Darwin's thoughts are shaped by his travels but not limited by them. First, the author spent most of his career working in New Guinea and too frequently uses this direct and narrow experience to add credibility to a more general assertions about other societies. The opening discussion of the battle at Cajamarca between the Spaniards and Incas, including translated first-hand accounts, is both riveting and thought-provoking.The book suffers from two main defects. These provincial interruptions sometimes interrupt the flow of an otherwise fine exposition.Second, the author seems intent to refute the idea that the current state of human society - with widely varying adoption of technology and social standards i different geographical areas - is the consequence of mathematically closed-form natural laws which can be employed to predict not only history from first principles, but future societal trends.

It's not hard to see why he was awarded the Pulitzer for this.-Colin Gershon A wonderfully insightful book. Diamond is brilliant in explaining why and how history has played out, on a broad scale, the way it has.