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Guns, Germs, and Steel

Full Title: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Author: Jared M. Diamond
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 496
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: 01 April 1999
ISBN 0393317552
Dewey Decimal: 303.4
Availability:Ready for order

Price: $12.89

Editorial Reviews

  • Product Description

    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.

  • Amazon.com Review

    Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.

Customer Reviews

  • Guns, Germa and Steel Audio Version

    A great audio adaptation of a great book. I listened to it on my commute to work.
    I have the actual book, but had no time to sit down and read it. If you are very busy, audio versions of books really work well.

  • Great book

    The narrator possesses a refined and compelling voice, and the author's writing style stimulates the mind. The author uses a tremendous amount of detail to avoid unnecessary/inaccurate generalizations and intentional/unintentional misinterpretations. However, the author executes this feat without allowing the reader to feel lost in mundane facts. I enjoyed the author's use of rhetorical questions to explore the viewpoints of persons who oppose his assertions. Overall, an informative and invigorating read. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has ever asked, "Why did certain people and cultures end up with so much, while others ended up with so little".

  • Absurd

    There are so many things wrong with this book,I don't know where to start. First, the author sees himself as a scientist and writes like he is providing an article to Vanity Fair. Ignoring science, disregarding significant works and stating opinion as fact he proceeds to batter us with trivia while ignoring facts. I have no argument with the inability of IQ tests to accurately define human intelligence as it relates to practical capability. That doesn't mean, as one of the other reviewers mentioned, that the Bell Curve is not a significant book. Argue the rationale not simply state an opinion and walk away. This book is so plagued with bad science and silly extrapolations from 11,000 years ago that it ignores many of the realities of history. I'll stop now but I could go on for paragraphs.

  • Human History for the Classroom

    Jared Diamond's incredible world history book should be required reading for high school students. No cheating allowed by just watching the National Geographic video versions--although the program *is* a great way to introduce the book.

  • Fascinating Book

    I'll be the first to admit that this book is dense, somewhat repetitive, and a difficult read. However, I won't be the first to admit that it's also one of the more fascinating reads out there if one is interested in the origin of civilizations, ecological anthropology and why some civilizations became more "advanced" than others. Diamond is at his best synthesizes great quantities of data, which he does here.

Your Reviews

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