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Guns, Germs, and Steel
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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: $12.21 |
Editorial Reviews
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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
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Very bad Kindle book
Do NOT get the Kindle version of this book. Get the "dead tree" version. There are numerous illustrations that do not come through properly on the ebook. Some of the tables that do come through are almost unreadable. I was shocked when I saw a paper version after reading the ebook. I really missed out. -
human history for the layman
This book was recommended by a friend who taught Honors history at the high-school level. I have been enjoying it enormously - it has helped me to put into perspective how human cultures arose and intertwined, affected by geography, climate and other factors. A challenging but comprehensible read. -
New Chapter Added
I read the book in a Chinese translation a long time ago. As all the footnotes and bibliography were not included in the Chinese edition, I ordered a hardcover of the original book and found there is a new chapter on Japan added at the end. It is a very inspiring book to anyone who is concerned with the fate of mankind. Readers interested in the author's view should also read his other books, namely "Third Chimpanzee", "Why is sex fun?" and "Collapse". -
Looking for the main drivers
No book or school in this field will convey the ultimate truth and understanding why some societies develop faster and different than others. Keeping this in mind, this book contains a lot of dimensions to think about, while it tries to cut down to the main drivers of development at the same time: guns, germs and steel. Actually, a lot more is discussed than just that. Sometimes it runs in loops, but still these discussions in circles make sense revisiting earlier conclusions from a different angle. After I started reading, I did not close the book until it was finished, revisiting many times my studies in Geography at Cologne University (more than 20 years ago) and the discussions of a deterministic approach for development. Enjoyed this book. -
Regret, regret
Totally regret this purchase. Two chapters in i quit. This guy is so self ceter and full of....? bull.
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