Guns, Germs and Steel

The Fates of Human Societies

Hardcover, 480 pages

English language

Published 1997 by W.W. Norton.

ISBN:
978-0-393-03891-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
519701464

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (167 reviews)

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here, at last, is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life even more intriguing and important than accounts of dinosaurs and glaciers.

The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, paths of development of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the southeastern United States, and other areas gave peoples of those regions a head start. Why wheat and corn, cattle and pigs, and the modern world's other "blockbuster" crops …

5 editions

Review of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I am 100% certain that some of the things I read in this book I will still be mentioning in conversation years and years from now. That's when you know it's good.

The classic informative style of "tell you the whole theory in the first chapter and then spend the rest of the book fleshing it out".

I also now know so much more about Papua New Guinea than I expected.

Fantastic work.

Review of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Thesis: accidents of geography and biogeography shaped societies. Easily domesticable plants and animals, directional axes, and randomness determined outcomes.

Likes:

- Whether or not you agree with Diamond, there’s plenty to gain from reading—so many fields are covered that you’re bound to learn from the histories of civilizations, plants, animals, inventions, etc.

- The chapter on language and writing. The possible impact on Chinese language and literacy due to their many homophones was interesting.

- The diffusion of technology, with Europe and China as an example. "China’s connectedness eventually became a disadvantage, because a decision by one despot could, and repeatedly did, halt innovation. Europe’s barriers were sufficient to prevent political unification, but insufficient to halt the spread of technology and ideas.” The many attempts of Christopher Columbus was another example.

- Some of his long tangents: purposefully inefficient keyboard design and Japanese pride of their kanji showed why different …

Review of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I watched the documentary based on this book years ago, but finally got around to reading the book. The book was also a lot longer than it needed to be. The entire second part of the book was a repeat of the first part, with the only difference that part two was organized by continent instead of by theme. I recommend watching the documentary instead of reading the book.

Review of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”. Yali's question serves the basis for a worldwide survey of the many factors influencing history and that determined the fates of world's power balance.

Through this amazingly thorough journey throughout history, we learn that most of what happened happened by chance, by subjecting different peoples in different continents to different conditions, conditions which were ultimately responsible for a particular set of peoples having reached the stage of dominating guns, steel and having greater immunity to certain (and very deadly germs).

This is probably one of the best books to make you rethink history under a much more naturalistic perspective, taking the thunder out of those that naively think that the real reasons for the present day status quo lie somewhere on human personality …

Review of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Geography.

That in essence is Dr Diamond's ultimate answer for why we see such disparity in human populations today and throughout history. Europeans were able to conquer the New World and not the other way around because of geographical factors giving them numerous advantages beginning with food production and leading to technology and immunity to disease. It was not because of some innate superiority of the European people, which is often the sort of argument put forward, and in the most extreme cases, used to justify exploitation or genocide.

This is an excellent book, thoroughly researched, logically and soberly argued, and including fascinating insights gathered by the author himself in New Guinea, a microcosm of human societies. What does the future hold for human societies? While geography perhaps plays a smaller role in modern times, lessons about human societal structures produced by geography may prove invaluable for the future success …

Review of 'Guns, germs, and steel' on Goodreads

4 stars

1) ''The most dramatic moment in subsequent European-North American relations was the first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. Atahuallpa was absolute monarch of the largest and most advanced state in the New World, while Pizarro represented the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain), monarch of the most powerful state in Europe. Pizarro, leading a ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, was in unfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local inhabitants, completely out of touch with the nearest Spaniards (1,000 miles to the north in Panama) and far beyond the reach of timely reinforcements. Atahuallpa was in the middle of his own empire of millions of subjects and immediately surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers, recently victorious in a war with other Indians. Nevertheless, Pizarro captured …

Review of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book takes a hard question and looks it straight in the eye, and patiently and dispassionately exorcises it of demons. The question Mr. Diamond addresses is: why is it that some cultures, races, and nations conquered others? This is the type of question that most people avoid even contemplating, due to its seemingly underlying racist assumptions. But the answers that are brought forth completely eliminate any possible basis for racism, and instead establish the factors of simple chance based on evolution due to geography and environment. A lot of the other reviewers on this site seemed to be off-put or mortified by Mr. Diamond's research, and I don't really understand them. This book is powerful in it's insistence on historical truth and scientific understanding, and its multidisciplinary integration is truly groundbreaking. I think this is a great companion book to philosophical treatises like [book: The Life Divine] or [book:Sex, …

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