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

In this book, the author sets out to determine why it is that Eurasians seem to have developed all the technology, and why they've managed to spread and "take over" world-wide, whereas other cultures weren't able to or just didn't do that.

It was o.k. I listened to the abridged audio (I hadn't realized it was abridged until I checked it out of the library, but decided to give it a shot, anyway). I'm not sure if some of the stuff that I think I missed (phrases that "suddenly" appeared without a definition, etc) was because I was not paying attention momentarily, or if it was something that was cut out of the book for the abridgment. I don't know if it would have made a difference if the version I had was unabridged, but the book was only o.k. for me. Somewhat interesting, but probably nothing I'll remember for any amount of time. I will probably still try another book by Diamond, however. ( )

I always wanted to turn this into a musical. ( )

It's easily observed that many native peoples did not develop technology at the same rate as the white Europeans who eventually conquered them. Since the times when whites first encountered these races, they believed that their lack of technology meant they were less intelligent leading to a generallized belief of Caucasions as a superior race.

In this book, Jared Diamond disabuses this notion. He cites a variety of anthropological arguments for the varied rates of technoligical development, including the number of plant and animal species available in an area for humans to domesticate, the ease of spread of new technologies and newly domesticates species, and impassable landforms which left cultures isolated. Naturally, this also affected disease resistance.

I have read very little anthropology, so I found this fascinating. I have no way of judging whether this is new information, or a compilation of arguments familiar to anthropologists, but I learned quite a bit. Since it is twenty years old, I noticed a few scientific inaccuracies (dogs being domesticated in more than one area is the one that stood out to me) and I'm sure that anthropology has similarly moved forward.

Nevertheless, I found it worthwhile and intriguing. ( )

This book was highly recommended to me by a former political science professor of mine about a year ago. I picked it up last week, and though reading it appears to be an intimidating endeavor it turned out to be quite interesting and manageable to get through. This Pulitzer Prize winner attempts to cover massive ground in under 500 pages, and while it would seem that small amount of space would sell short the fates of human societies, Diamond does a stellar job of incorporating all the aspects required of this topic into a relatable masterpiece.

Part of what makes Guns, Germs, and Steel so effortless to read is its repetitiveness, which also tends to be one of its major critiques. I think that the breadth of this book made repetition not just acceptable, but useful. The reader could easily lose track of what was being discussed if the focus was not continuously being brought back to the main ideas Diamond pursued. The big question this book tries to answer is why some societies advanced and prospered while numerous others did not. In short, it is a brief history of how human societies proceeded to their present state.

Diamond’s hypothesis is that there are many different reasons for how societies came to be the way they are today, but that racial differences is not among them. The four factors that he claims contributed most to the success or failure of societies are the differences in wild plant and animal life on the continents, the orientation of the continents’ major axis, the rate of diffusion between continents, and the total area and population size of each of the continents. For instance, Eurasia had 13 of the 14 domesticatable animal species in the world, has a major axis orientation of west-east rather than north-south, was least impeded by geographic barriers to spread information, and has the largest land mass and population size of any of the continents. This book documents how each of these factors affected the populations of each continent in the development of human societies.

One of the major sections of Guns, Germs, and Steel focuses on food production and dissemination, which I found particularly interesting. Diamond explains that having domesticatable animal and plant species is essential to progress a human society. The comfort of our current culture is a result of our ancestors transitioning from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to sedentary farmers. Stockpiling food, branching into handicrafts, creating a written language, and building up immunities to germs transmitted by livestock would never have been possible if humans had not begun to cultivate the land. As this book jaunts on, the layers from which society is constructed are clearly presented and reiterated, so that by the end you will have no trouble explaining why the hundreds of thousands of Aztecs were conquered by the few hundred Spaniards, or why the Australians never independently developed agriculture. As Diamond notes and demonstrates, history is indeed like an onion.

While an impressive amount of information is covered in this work, I got the sense that a lot was being left unsaid. Not until the epilogue does Diamond begin to point out historical instances that are more than just anomalies in his theory. For example, China had advantages in every area Diamond suggests is important to advancing society, and yet it was Europe, not China, that colonized the Americas. He asserts this to China being so unified that the decision of a single person could impede the progress of the entire nation. (Interestingly, this is what led to China abandoning everything from mechanical clocks to the entire school system at one point!) Europe, on the other hand, had many competing rulers and opinions which helped it advance ahead of China. This makes sense, but seems to be in conflict with Diamond’s hypothesis, which is that geography and resources are what gave cultures advantages, not the humans within the cultures. This is not a racist explanation, as Diamond was trying to avoid, since there has probably been someone in every society who thought it would be best to do away with seafaring ships at one time or another. It just happened that that person was in a position of power in China at an unfortunate time.

Diamond does a fantastic job of working through the history of human societies on every continent and explaining why they are the way they are today. He employs the knowledge of many disciplines, including linguistics, geography, biology and agronomy, to name a few. Though the scientific method may not have been properly used here, as Diamond presents only information that supports his hypothesis, the premise and conclusion are logical and well presented. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a definite asset to anyone’s bookshelf. ( )

4 ( )