Synopsis
This history examines the influences of geography and environment on the development of civilization and seeks to find large patterns that might explain why, in the modern period, some groups seem to have significantly greater material wealth than others. The author is an evolutionary biologist and his scientific approach to human history draws on examples from societies all over the world.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1999-04-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 480 pages | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 19.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
In this "artful, informative, and delightful (book)" ("New York Review of Books"), Diamond offers a convincing explanation of the way the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Photos.
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 a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized 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. Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, is the author of the best-selling and award-winning The Third Chimpanzee. He has published over 200 articles in Discover, Natural History, Nature, and Geo magazines.
Industry Reviews
"This is a wonderfully interesting book, especially for historians of the usual liberal arts background, who will find the final chapter 'The Future of the History of Science,' alone worth the price of admission."
Los Angeles Times Book Review - Alfred W. Crosby (03/09/1997)
"...[A] fascinating and extremely important book....[A] volume no one should leave college without reading."
Washington Post Book World - David Brown (05/11/1997)
"....Mr. Diamond peels away the causes beneath the causes of...European cultural advantages, as if the humanized world were a gigantic onion and recorded history only its blighted surface. His multilayered analysis, however, should be consumed with a grain or two of salt. Its sheer depth compels him to wear the hats of anthropologist, archeologist, plant geneticist, epidemiologist and social, military and technological historian, as well as his own academic headgear. Mr. Diamond acknowledges that no single person can be an authority in all these fields, yet he mentions most of the other scholars who must have informed his ideas not in the text but only in an addendum. This makes for a smoother exposition, perhaps, but combined with the sometimes didactic style of the narrative, it imparts an unwarranted sense of objectivity, as if everything happened when, where and how in prehistory just as Jared Diamond says it did. Each of the disciplines into which he delves to further his argument is rife with uncertainties, differing interpretations and opposing viewpoints. A closer examination of them would have only strengthened an already formidable work."
New York Times Book Review - James Shreeve (06/15/1997)
"...[A]n impressive achievement, with nods to the historians, anthropologists, and others who laid the groundwork."
Gates
"[Diamond's] masterful synthesis is a refreshingly unconventional history informed by anthropology, behavioral ecology, linguistics, epidemiology, archeology and technological development."
(01/13/1997)
"The scope and the explanatory power of this book are astounding."
New Yorker
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