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Loading... Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997)by Jared Diamond
  
Favourite Books (70) » 32 more Unread books (20) Top Five Books of 2013 (505) Books Read in 2013 (94) Top Five Books of 2014 (1,043) Books Read in 2018 (3,615) Big tags (1) Falling for Science (44) Reading list (32) Big History (54) I Can't Finish This Book (112) Allie's Wishlist (80) Five star books (1,195) No current Talk conversations about this book. I’d love to give this book 3 stars since I largely agree with Diamond’s arguments, but his simplistic argumentation and lack of any citations was extremely jarring. Moreover his recommendation of The Bell Curve in ‘further reading’ with no discussion whatsoever left a sour taste. (  )1   woj2000 | Mar 24, 2022 |  Enjoyed the tour of different factors that may explain different outcomes across human civilizations up to now. If you, consciously or otherwise, had a pet theory that explained what you knew, you may want to reconsider after being introduced to other possible explanations. I think the book fell short on explaining how different facts came to be known, and in not attempting to quantify the relative magnitudes of the different proposed effects. (  ) orm_tmr | Mar 16, 2022 | A classic account of how the world got to be the way it was, and how human activity was shaped by geography and the distribution of plant and animal species, which in turn shaped the rise of contagious diseases and the adoption of technology. The account weaves together anthropology, archaeology, epidemiology and more. Diamond seeks to demonstrate that the certain peoples came to dominate the planet because of these characteristics, and hence disprove racial explanations. In this he is only partly successful. He does not address race directly or how different races came into being. Diamond himself can fall back into his own racial stereotypes - such as observing that the average New Guinean is smarter than the average European. He tells a story of how plants and animals have evolved over thousands of years to be more productive through their contact with people, but chooses not to explore whether humans themselves can also evolve useful characteristics over the same time scales. Finally, the book is now over 20 years old. It captured a great deal of current scientific research at the time of publication, but science has not stood still. If anything, this publication is likely to have provoked more research. A successor book looks like it will be be needed. ( ) dunnmj | Mar 10, 2022 | A great insightful book giving a great explanation as to why the world turned out the way it did. Although I skipped the last hundred pages cause it really started to ditch the thesis of the book into more general history of China and Africa ( ) pgarri16 | Mar 5, 2022 | Through precise language and broad analysis, Guns, Germs and Steel swept away the last lingering cobwebs of European exceptionalism that I had accumulated in the unexamined corners of my mind. So much of my high school history had received an implicit narrative arc, usually terminating with the US, that a directionless recounting was kind of revelatory. (  )1 cathect | Mar 1, 2022 |
 In ''Guns, Germs, and Steel,'' an ambitious, highly important book, Jared Diamond asks: How did Pizarro come to be at Cajamarca capturing Atahualpa, instead of Atahualpa in Madrid capturing King Charles I? Why, indeed, did Europeans (and especially western Europeans) and Asians always triumph in their historical conquests of other populations? Why weren't Native Americans, Africans and aboriginal Australians instead the ones who enslaved or exterminated the Europeans?  Jared Diamond has written 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 analysing some of the basic workings of cultural process. . . It is willing to simplify and to generalize; and it does reach conclusions, about ultimate as well as proximate causes, that carry great conviction, and that have rarely, perhaps never, been stated so coherently or effectively before. For that reason, and with few reservations, this book may be welcomed as one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years. Belongs to SeriesContainsHas the adaptationHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a commentary on the text
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.4 — Social sciences Social Sciences Social Processes Social changeLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.12)
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