Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1999, Paperback)

I enjoyed reading this book. It begins with a question that takes several hundred pages to answer.

The question is: how did some civilations end up to be the dominant while others simply faded away?

The book serves to answer this question in depth, probing into topics such as: the biodiversity of both plant and animal species for a particular geographical area which affected the successful conversion of societies from hunting and gathering to food production and animal domestication.
Other factors include orientation and geographies of large land masses, i.e. whether oriented longitudinal or latitudinal, or whether mountains or desert separate areas, which affected transfer of populations and/or technologies.

All in all, a fascinating read and a high level view of the entire human history and if anything, you'll have a new appreciation of our world become more and more global.