Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jared DiamondEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2005-07-11
ISBN: 0393061310
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Book Reviews of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Book Review: An entertaining, informative journey through human history
Summary: 4 Stars
Ever wonder how the Europeans managed to conquor the Americas, and not the other way around? Well, if you're unfortunate enough to have that much time on your hands, there's now a book tailor-made for you! Jared Diamond details how some civilizations have come to conquor others, and not vice versa. Obviously, they do this by utilizing guns, germs, and steel (gee, wonder where he gets the title from?)...but the underlying question, of course, is HOW certain societies got those advances, and how others did not?
I'm not a professional historian, biologist, anthropologist, or what-have-you, so I can't state boldly that Diamond's evidence holds up. But his argument does have a certain logic about it. Not saying there aren't other factors that he should consider (environment can't be the only reason people do what they do), but he does present a convincing argument, at least to this layman (and the fact that we're still reading this book 10 years later suggests professionals have found it food for thought as well).
A note to casual readers, as many of you probably are. There are sections of this book that become a bit monotonous; the three chapters detailing the rise of food production in various world societies is a bit mind-numbing (blame our violence-soaked media), and there's a lot of information that gets tossed around here without thorough explanation. Never fear, though--this book is well-worth the read, and is largely entertaining. Diamond's prose would make for a good textbook (there are questions in the back accompanying this volume; not sure what class you could read this in, but I would reccommend it for anyone interesting in trying it); he places a bit too much emphasis upon New Guinea (where he has performed years of field research), but we can't blame him for writing about what he loves, can we? "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is an interesting, thought-provoking book about the rise and fall of society throughout the ages. Highly reccommended for anyone with even a passing interest on the subject.
Summary of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
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.With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller—over 1.5 million copies sold—is now a major PBS special.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series.
Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.
The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.
He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers. 32 illustrations.
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