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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies By Jared M. Diamond ( W. W. Norton & Company )
Release Date: 1999-04-01
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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.
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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.
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 A profound and lasting classic
This is a truly profound book, and quite elegantly written. The central insight is how geography has been a main driving factor in the development of civilizations. Diamond comes at this thesis from several different angles, most importantly after looking at how development has differed between different regions.
Diamond builds a very compelling argument, and is helped by his intimate knowledge of many places - knowledge which comes from actually having spent quite a deal of traveling. He is also helped by his diverse background - as a scientist he has also written two brilliant books on biology (The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.) & Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality (Science Masters)).
This is popular science at its best, easily understandable, yet deep in insight.
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 Fascinating overview of environmental factors, but too biased ( bob017 )
This is a fascinating study of how societies developed, however, it's frustrating that Diamond takes such an ideological position at the outset, ruling out some factors simply because he doesn't like them.
"Inexcusably for an evolutionary biologist, Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations. All of the Eurasian developments he described created positive feedback loops selecting for increased intelligence and various personality traits (e.g., altruism, rule-following, etc.)."
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History; It's What's for Dinner
Dr. Diamond's magnum opus for which he has won an Oscar. Or maybe it was the Pullet Surprise. Something like that.
Unrivaled, in the experience of this humble reviewer, in either clarity or insight, GGS, is one of the best books I have ever read. Diamond is a gifted writer and is able to present complex issues simply and clearly. He also presents several interesting hypotheses regarding the evolution of civilization about how the humans had uncomfortably little to do with anything. We are the products of the plants and animals we domesticated. So go read the book before I domesticate you...
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Fascinating! ( heathmay )
It took me a while to open this book, as I was absolutely convinced that, with a title like Guns, Germs and Steel, the subject could only be war. Eventually, however, I opened the book, and was absolutely fascinated by it. The premise of the book is Yali's question. Yali, a native of New Guinea, has never been out of his country, is "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"
The answer to this question takes about 430 pages of very interesting reading, going back to the rise and spread of food production, from food to guns, germs and steel, around the world in 5 chapters. The writer, Jared Diamond delves into pre-history, how and why the nomadic hunter/gatherers became more stationary, and started to form villages, and what effect that had on their way of life. What is necessary to sustain villages. The advance of specialisation. Why some areas were more susceptible to change than others. The geographic climate that helped or hindered.
As I say, this is a very interesting book, and one that will long live with you. However, it is perhaps rather hard reading, insofar as it is written probably for college students. It is not a book that should be read in a hurry, but should be savoured.
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Great subject and treatment - shakey science ( m_harbie )
I know everyone says this - just adding my voice.
The author needs to define his terms - what does he mean by 'smart' when talking about the New Guineans. What does he mean by calling Australia 'backwards'? I wish he developed these vague/biased terms.
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