Guns, Germs & Steel – The Fates of Human Societies - Softcover

9780393317558: Guns, Germs & Steel – The Fates of Human Societies
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Review:
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.
Review:
An ambitious, highly important book. -- James Shreeve

The scope and explanatory power of this book are astounding.

An ambitious, highly important book.--James Shreeve

Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope . . . one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years. --Colin Renfrew

Guns, Germs and Steel lays a foundation for understanding human history, which makes it fascinating in its own right. Because it brilliantly describes how chance advantages can lead to early success in a highly competitive environment, it also offers useful lessons for the business world and for people interested in why technologies succeed. --Bill Gates

A fascinating and extremely important book. That its insights seem so fresh, its facts so novel and arresting, is evidence of how little Americans and, I suspect, most well-educated citizens of the Western world know of the most important forces of human history. --David Brown

Artful, informative, and delightful.... There is nothing like a radically new angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject, and that is what Jared Diamond has done. --William H. McNeil

A book of remarkable scope, a history of the world in less than 500 pages which succeeds admirably, where so many others have failed, in analyzing some of the basic workings of culture process.... One of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years. --Colin Renfrew

The scope and the explanatory power of this book are astounding.

Fascinating and extremely important... [A] synopsis doesn't do credit to the immense subtlety of this book. --David Brown

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  • PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
  • Publication date1999
  • ISBN 10 0393317552
  • ISBN 13 9780393317558
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages496
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780393354324: Guns, Germs, and Steel – The Fates of Human Societies

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780393354324
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017
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    Vintage, 1998
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  • 9780393061314: Guns, Germs, and Steel – The Fates of Human Societies

    W. W. ..., 2005
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  • 9781784873639: Guns, Germs and Steel: (Patterns of Life)

    Vintag..., 2019
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  • 9780393038910: Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

    W. W. ..., 1997
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