GUNS, GERMS & STEEL is an ambitious - if not audacious -
work that explains why human civilizations have succeeded
and failed throughout history. Diamond's primary assertion
is that the development of human societies is predominantly
determined by environmental and geographic factors. The
book is an exploration of his thesis, and explanations of
how these factors have shaped civilizations, from the
initial spread of homo sapiens to the present day. It's a
grand anthropological theory-of-everything that is quite
fascinating, and very enlightening.
Diamond is a scientist at heart, and it's obvious from his
writing.
This book is not an easy read, as his style borders on the
ponderous, if not pedantic. He is not content to merely
make assertions and move on. Instead, he makes assertions
and then provides numerous examples and copious amounts of
data to back it up. This could become frustrating if it
weren't for the fact that his examples are typically quite
interesting in their own right.
This is a book that sticks in your head, forcing you to
think, and challenging your understanding of civilization.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 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.
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