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

by Jared Diamond Ph.D.

Overview

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates
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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393354324
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	20th Anniversary Edition
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	2,211
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jared Diamond is professor of geography at UCLA and author of the best-selling Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee. He is a MacArthur Fellow and was awarded the National Medal of Science.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition: Why Is World History Like an Onion? 9

Prologue Yali's Question The regionally differing courses of history 13

Part 1 From Eden To Cajamarca

Chapter 1 Up to the Starting Line What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.? 35

Chapter 2 A Natural Experiment of History How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands 52

Chapter 3 Collision at Cajamarca Why the lnca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain 65

Part 2 The Rise and Spread of Food Production

Chapter 4 Farmer Power The roots of guns, germs, and steel 81

Chapter 5 History's Haves and Have-Nots Geographic differences in the onset of food production 89

Chapter 6 To Farm or Not to Farm Causes of the spread of food production 100

Chapter 7 How to Make an Almond The unconscious development of ancient crops 109

Chapter 8 Apples Or Indians Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants? 126

Chapter 9 Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated? 151

Chapter 10 Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents? 169

Part 3 From Food to Guns, Germs, and Steel

Chapter 11 Lethal Gift of Livestock The evolution of germs 187

Chapter 12 Blueprints and Borrowed Letters The evolution of writing 206

Chapter 13 Necessity's Mother The evolution of technology 229

Chapter 14 From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy The evolution of government and religion 254

Part 4 Around the World in Six Chapters

Chapter 15 Yali's People The histories of Australia and New Guinea 283

Chapter 16 How China Became Chinese The history of East Asia 308

Chapter 17 Speedboat to Polynesia The history of the Austronesian expansion 320

Chapter 18 Hemispheres Colliding The histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared 339

Chapter 19 How Africa Became Black The history of Africa 361

Chapter 20 Who Are the Japanese? The history of Japan 386

Epilogue The Future of Human History as a Science 409

2017 Afterword: Rich and Poor Countries in Light of Guns, Germs, and Steel 433

Acknowledgments 445

Further Readings 447

Credits 475

Index 477

Editorial Reviews

An epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority.

Thomas M. Disch - The New Leader

[Diamond] is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English, and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity has developed. . . . [He] has done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer. . . . A wonderfully interesting book.

Alfred W. Crosby - Los Angeles Times

Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so. . . . Now [Guns, Germs, and Steel] must be added to their select number. . . . Diamond meshes technological mastery with historical sweep, anecdotal delight with broad conceptual vision, and command of sources with creative leaps. No finer work of its kind has been published this year, or for many past.”

Martin Sieff - Washington Times

No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition.”

Edward O. Wilson

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

The New Yorker

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 - Nature

An ambitious, highly important book.

James Shreeve - New York Times Book Review

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 - New York Review of Books