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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997)

by Jared DIAMOND

Other authors: Mie Hidle (Translator)

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: Civilizations Rise and Fall (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
23,830360128 (4.11)588
Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here, at last, is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life even more intriguing and important than accounts of dinosaurs and glaciers. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world, and its inequalities, came to be. It is a work rich in dramatic revelations that will fascinate readers even as it challenges conventional wisdom.… (more)
Recently added bye.brentjones, Aneurysm, pranavt, private library, caro_dimo, marla_bg, S4r4h_M, arches-academy
  1. 160
    Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond (infiniteletters)
  2. 152
    1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (VisibleGhost, electronicmemory)
  3. 104
    A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Percevan)
  4. 50
    The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan (TomWaitsTables)
  5. 40
    Maps of Time : An Introduction to Big History by David Christian (questbird)
    questbird: Big History is a multidisciplinary approach (like Diamond's) which integrates the origin of the universe, deep time, human prehistory and history.
  6. 51
    The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes (Oct326)
    Oct326: La tesi centrale del saggio di Diamond è che la causa dominante dei disuguali gradi di sviluppo tra popolazioni umane sia data dalle condizioni ambientali più o meno favorevoli. Il saggio di Landes ha un argomento un po' differente, e cioè il disuguale grado di sviluppo economico e di ricchezza tra popolazioni. Ma sulle cause di queste differenze è più articolato, e mette in rilievo l'importanza dei fattori culturali. È un punto di vista piuttosto diverso, e questo rende interessante il confronto tra le due opere.… (more)
  7. 40
    Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Percevan)
    Percevan: Both books are eminently throwing light on the big lines in human history
  8. 30
    The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community by William H. McNeill (wildbill)
    wildbill: William McNeill chronicles the struggle between nomad and sedentary peoples in a book that continues the themes of Guns, Germs and Steel
  9. 30
    Germs, Genes, & Civilization: How Epidemics Shaped Who We Are Today by David P. Clark (infiniteletters)
  10. 20
    The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby (John_Vaughan)
  11. 20
    From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun (MusicMom41)
    MusicMom41: Guns, Germs and Steel makes a great “prelude’ to Barzun’s book From Dawn to Decadence.
  12. 20
    The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry by Bryan Sykes (Percevan)
  13. 10
    The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything by Adrian Bejan (br77rino)
  14. 10
    The horse, the wheel and language by David W. Anthony (tcg17321)
  15. 43
    The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (Percevan)
    Percevan: Both books are eminently throwing light on the big lines in human history
  16. 10
    Wild: An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths (hohlwelt)
    hohlwelt: Complements very well with what Jared Diamond misses and vice versa.
  17. 10
    Children of the Ice Age: How a Global Catastrophe Allowed Humans to Evolve by Steven M. Stanley (br77rino)
    br77rino: Children of the Ice Age is an excellent anthropological discussion of the link that became homo sapiens. Guns, Germs, and Steel covers the more recent territory of racial evolution within homo sapiens.
  18. 00
    Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich (Cynfelyn)
    Cynfelyn: Who We Are and How We Got Here (2018) is a genetic interpretation successor to the cultural interpretation of Guns, Germs and Steel (1997).
  19. 00
    Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall (Oct326)
    Oct326: Questi due libri sono abbastanza diversi, ma hanno un tema in comune, e cioè il peso della geografia sulle vicende umane.
  20. 00
    Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect by Paul R. Ehrlich (bookcrushblog)

(see all 26 recommendations)

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» See also 588 mentions

English (328)  Italian (10)  Dutch (7)  Spanish (3)  French (3)  German (3)  Swedish (3)  Catalan (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (359)
Showing 1-5 of 328 (next | show all)
An incredibly informative read. Highly recommended to anyone who's not afraid of facts about the history of the human civilization. ( )
  zeh | Jun 3, 2023 |
I cannot bear to retract the 5 stars I originally gave this book that inspired my fascination with 'Big History': long-term, globally comparative history that attempts to answer questions like why Europe, and not China or any other civilization, went on to conquer the globe. So much of the content is fascinating, especially the role of the biogeography of plants, animals and diseases in history.

But the central line of argument, that European conquest of so much of the rest of the world was determined by biogeography, and specifically that one can work back from Pizarro's capture of Atahualpa to the geographical base of world history, has been subject to coruscating criticism. Diamond stands accused of such mistakes as taking conquistadors at their word on how their guns, horses and bravado overwhelmed the Aztecs and Incas, while ignoring the role of native allies in what were in reality interventions in civil wars; inaccurately attributing epidemic diseases which killed millions of Native American to Eurasian livestock; and obfuscating the role of colonial enslavement and oppression in the Native American death toll. See:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2bv2yf/guns_germs_and_steel_chapter...

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2cfhon/guns_germs_and_steel_chapter...

The thesis is too simple. It's not quite right. But where it is wrong, it is at least interestingly wrong, and further reading to work out how and why it is wrong is very worthwhile.

To read as a counterpoint: [b:Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest|174710|Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest|Matthew Restall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390408627s/174710.jpg|168768] ( )
  fji65hj7 | May 14, 2023 |
Amazing read! It is unexpected how much I enjoyed reading this, especially since the main focus being of history through the lenses of geography and science in their many technical facets. I usually find these subjects a bore, especially geography, but I am currently trying to read more of them. Alhamdulilah, this book only contributed to furthering my interest in these subjects, not lessening it.

What I learnt was how interconnected so much of the world already was, thousands if not tens of thousands of years ago. Indeed, this is so much so that I've been thinking of the term 'Eurasia' a lot lately in contrast to 'Europe' and 'Asia' as we know it today. Diamond gives fascinating insights into the developmental effects upon a society by factors such as: food production, geography, climate, proximity to other societies and even the axis of continents. He takes a very broad approach of singling out continents rather than specific nations or empires, and a timeline spanning thousands of years rather than centuries or decades. Further, he compares classes of hunter gatherers, bands, tribes and empires.

Diamond is careful to note of specific critiques of 'geographical determinism'. I personally had some slight impressions of this before reading it, however, I really think it's just explaining history through the factoring in of many different scientific fields. It doesn't have to be one or the other, I still lean very much towards societies having the ability in choosing their own course, but within the material parameters set out by their times I suppose.

The central question of this book ("Yali's Question") is why Europeans colonised the New World rather than vice versa. And finishing the book, I think Diamond better answered the question 'why certain empires from the Old World were able to conquer the New World rather than vice versa'. Thus, he gives the factors behind both landmasses into their trajectories in material advancements and explains their clashes during first contact.

Along the way there's chapters dedicated to early humans and their migration patterns, the earliest food producing civilisations around the Fertile Crescent, the Chinese expansion, the Indonesian migration (indeed, all the way to Africa and Australia!), the clashes between hunter gatherer and food producing societies etc.

There's a lot this book has made me think about. I recommend it to everyone with even a slightest interest in history or human societies in general.
( )
  Harris023 | Apr 23, 2023 |
I really wanted to like this book but oh my I doubt his writing could have been any more boring. Totally reads like a textbook, and the author restates the same things over and over and over again.
Academics have the unique ability to take any subject, no matter how interesting or fascinating and they somehow make it painful and boring to read about. ( )
  zmagic69 | Mar 31, 2023 |
I somewhat enjoyed this book. The author covers a tremendous volume of information and does so relatively well. I admit, I had to press through some of the chapters as they were less engaging than others, but I guess that is to be expected in a book of this type, tackling such a large topic. I had been on my tbr for some time and I’m glad I read it. ( )
  asher1128 | Jan 3, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 328 (next | show all)
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.
added by jlelliott | editNature, Colin Renfrew (Mar 27, 1997)
 

» Add other authors (49 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
DIAMOND, Jaredprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Mie HidleTranslatorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Cavalli-Sforza, Francescosecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
CAVALLI-SFORZA, Luigi Lsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Chueca, FabiánTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Civalleri, LuigiTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Johansson, IngerTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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To Esa, Kariniga, Omwai, Paran, Sauakari, Wiwor,
and all my other New Guinea friends and
teachers - masters of a difficult environment.
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This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. (Preface to the Paperback Edition)
We all know that history has proceeded very differently for peoples from different parts of the globe. (Prologue)
A suitable starting point from which to compare historical developments on the different continents is around 11,000 B.C.
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Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here, at last, is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life even more intriguing and important than accounts of dinosaurs and glaciers. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world, and its inequalities, came to be. It is a work rich in dramatic revelations that will fascinate readers even as it challenges conventional wisdom.

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A lavishly illustrated 20th anniversary edition of Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of how and why Eurasians developed the weapons, diseases and technologies that enabled them to dominate the rest of the world.
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W.W. Norton

2 editions of this book were published by W.W. Norton.

Editions: 0393317552, 0393061310

HighBridge Audio

An edition of this book was published by HighBridge Audio.

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HighBridge

An edition of this book was published by HighBridge.

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