I'm very interested in history, ancient history, and anthropology, so this book naturally appealed to me. This book attempts to explain why people in Europe ended up colonizing and conquering most of the rest of the world. The simple answer is the title of the book, and Diamond attempts to explain why the Europeans had guns, germs and steel while other societies did not. His theory is that Europe and Asia had more natural resources, more domesticatible animals and plants, how those food sources allowed the formation of larger governments, armies, and so forth. He also explains how having access to other societies important for idea diffusion. These ideas can lead to technological inventions that can give a particular society an edge. In addition to explaining things in that manner, he also looks at Polynesian societies to explain why some were able to create larger governments.

I found the book very interesting, although he has the tendency to repeat himself. I understood his central argument the first time he wrote it; it was not necessary to reiterate it over and over again in each chapter. Some of his examples are weak, and his ideas are not without criticism from trained historians and anthropologists.

Still, interesting read and an interesting way to think about the domination of western civilization. ( )

A well-written exploration into the world's power struggles. ( )

Great book! It presents history in a way that's not the typical white European way. It also argues how some society's were able to dominate others due to environmental inequalities. ( )

Possibly the most interesting book I've read in the last 10 years. The author presents the idea that western culture (particularly Europeans, as opposed to indigenous Australians, Americans, Africans) are dominant in the World today only because they (the Europeans) originated in an area of the world that was rich in animal and plant recources (that could be utilized via domestication), and was geographically in an area where ideas like domestication, writing, town and city life and state building could be easily spread and picked up by neighbours of the region. ( )

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is a fine explication of the reasons why a few human populations have come to dominate more or less wholly the economic resources of the modern world, when, a few tens of millennia ago, there were few differences in material culture among the many roving bands of human hunter-gatherers. Somebody had to write this book, and its popularity says something quite complimentary about the reading public. But it has enough thoroughgoing problems to have made it difficult for me to enjoy it wholeheartedly.

Diamond does his best work when he focuses on answering fundamental questions: Why are certain species of plants and animals better candidates for domestication than others? Why were Old World germs so lethal to New World peoples, and not vice versa? Why did plant domestication spread so easily east and west from Mesopotamia, but with such difficulty north and south through Africa and the Americas? Diamond's answers are neither exhaustive nor immune from criticism, but the fact that plausible answers can be ventured at all is bound to pique the curiosity of many readers.

The book's most grating feature is its palpable political-correctness. Over and over, from its first page to its last, Diamond reminds us that the history of the earth has been determined by the ecological resources available to early humans at different locations, and not by biological differences between human populations. This position is, in point of fact, well-supported throughout. But Diamond's preachy earnestness on this point begins to feel accusatory rather early on, so much so that his objectivity feels compromised for most of the book. Perhaps he should have saved his moralizing for the epilogue, rather than allowing it to color his tone on every other page.

Diamond's examples are mostly tedious, and serve more to recapitulate his bulletpoints than to elucidate lingering complexities. The chapters on writing, technology, religion, and government (comprising about 100 pages) could probably have been culled entirely, or else included in a much-abridged form, because they collectively carried little weight in advancing Diamond's thesis. Finally, Diamond employs a needlessly turgid prose style. I would estimate that roughly two sentences per page of Guns, Germs, and Steel begin with the word "hence"; this happens occasionally in as many as three sentences per paragraph. These stylistic repetitions, coupled with Diamond's interminable recapitulations, make it very difficult to read more than one chapter in a sitting.

I'd recommend Guns, Germs, and Steel highly for its content. Its scope is broad and its depth is limited, which makes it accessible to even the most casual student of history and pre-history. But do expect to have to "power through" at some points, because Diamond's style and tone are more offputting than effective. This is by no means non-fiction writing at its best, but it is worth reading in any event.