Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years Book

Life isn't fair--here's why: Since 1500, Europeans have, for better and worse, called the tune that the world has danced to. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains the reasons why things worked out that way. It is an elemental question, and Diamond is certainly not the first to ask it. However, he performs a singular service by relying on scientific fact rather than specious theories of European genetic superiority. Diamond, a professor of physiology at UCLA, suggests that the geography of Eurasia was best suited to farming, the domestication of animals and the free flow of information. The more populous cultures that developed as a result had more complex forms of government and communication--and increased resistance to disease. Finally, fragmented Europe harnessed the power of competitive innovation in ways that China did not. (For example, the Europeans used the Chinese invention of gunpowder to create guns and subjugate the New World.) Diamond's book is complex and a bit overwhelming. But the thesis he methodically puts forth--examining the "positive feedback loop" of farming, then domestication, then population density, then innovation, and on and on--makes sense. Written without bias, Guns, Germs, and Steel is good global history.Read More

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  • Amazon

    This work abandons the conventional distinctions between history and science. Diamond focuses on what ancient people were endowed with in the way of land, animals and plants, and on the confrontations between less and more advanced people to see how this led to today's inequalities.

  • Foyles

    Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel remains a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science. This edition includes a new afterword from the author.

  • Play

    This book answers the most obvious the most important yet the most difficult question about human history: why history unfolded so differently on different continents. Geography and biogeography not race moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans Asians Native Americans sub-Saharan Africans and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history biology ecology and linguistics Guns Germs and Steel is one of the most important and humane works of popular science.

  • BookDepository

    Guns, Germs and Steel : Paperback : Vintage Publishing : 9780099302780 : 0099302780 : 26 Apr 2000 : 'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe?

  • 0099302780
  • 9780099302780
  • Jared M. Diamond
  • 25 April 1998
  • Vintage
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 480
  • New edition
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