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Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human…
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Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies (original 1997; edition 1999)

by Jared M. Diamond

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
24,891373132 (4.1)591
History. Sociology. Technology. Nonfiction. HTML:

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."??Bill Gates

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion ??as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war ??and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Go… (more)
Member:emmkaay
Title:Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies
Authors:Jared M. Diamond
Info:New York : W.W. Norton, [2003], c1999.
Collections:Your library
Rating:
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Work Information

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

  1. 170
    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. 61
    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)
  5. 50
    The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan (TomWaitsTables)
  6. 40
    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
  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. 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.
  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
    The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry by Bryan Sykes (Percevan)
  12. 20
    From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun (MusicMom41)
    MusicMom41: Guns, Germs and Steel makes a great “prelude’ to Barzun’s book From Dawn to Decadence.
  13. 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.
  14. 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
  15. 10
    Wild: An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths (hohlwelt)
    hohlwelt: Complements very well with what Jared Diamond misses and vice versa.
  16. 10
    The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything by Adrian Bejan (br77rino)
  17. 10
    The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony (tcg17321)
  18. 11
    Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade (IslandDave)
  19. 00
    Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect by Paul R. Ehrlich (bookcrushblog)
  20. 00
    A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (thebookpile)

(see all 26 recommendations)

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» See also 591 mentions

English (340)  Italian (11)  Dutch (7)  French (3)  German (3)  Spanish (3)  Swedish (3)  Catalan (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (372)
Showing 1-5 of 340 (next | show all)
Interesting, but way too drawn out and dry. The idea of "Why did X develop in one part of the world but not another?" is neat, but he has a tendency to go off-topic and get into too much unrelated detail. Also, there is a strong bias towards New Guinea. ( )
  kylecarroll | Mar 7, 2024 |
NF
  vorefamily | Feb 22, 2024 |
I read 2/3 of this in the mid-2000s and let's be real, I'm never going to finish that last 1/3.
1 vote caedocyon | Feb 21, 2024 |
Social Conditions
  BooksInMirror | Feb 19, 2024 |
I started "Gun, Germs and Steel" with great anticipation, as this is one of the most often recommended book. Subject, prima facie, appears a bit dry, but given popularity of this book, I decided to go ahead with reading. Prologue left me with mixed and conflicting feelings.

First, the problem statement, as posed by the author, that why did different regions of world evolved at different rate, and how come world is as it is, seemed to violate Anthropic Principle. That irrespective of however the civilizations could have evolved, there is only one course they could have taken, and one current state which could have been observed, and that such question could have always been asked, even if there is inherently nothing but randomness in the path chosen.

Second, author's compelling motive to write this book, even admitted by him, is that alternate explanation is a racist one. Author goes on to great lengths to suggest that this book's explanation is not racist. As any alert reader can gauge, that a scientific enquiry, pre biased to seek explanation of certain form, cannot really be objective. There is unexplained and assumed obvious premise that racist explanations of the problem statement are wrong, because they are "loathsome". Why should they be? Even as author himself clarifies that explanation of worldly discrepancies in not support for such discrepancies, and that explanation of cause is not justification of outcome, he conveniently forgets that even explanation based in racists root doesn't imply condoning racism. In fact, repeated assertion that this is no racist explanation belies narrow prism of view.

Third, even if I go along with author on racism, author's definition of racism is very narrow and unworthy of any intellectual. In his quest to prove himself non-racist, author goes on to suggest, on mere power of his hunch and observation, and not rooted in any scientific experiment, that native tribes of New Guinea are smarter than white Europeans, and not even blinking at apparent 'racism' inherent in this statement. In his opinion, claiming white people superior to native is racist, but vice-versa is not. Inherent imbecility of this world-view is akin to illogical excuse rendered by many people, that they cannot possibly be homophobic since they have gay friends.

Fourth, last part of prologue goes onto grandiose self-aggrandising that how author is uniquely qualified, by birth and education, to undertake such monumental task of synthesizing multi-disciplinary subject of human history including evolutionary biology, linguistic, and social history.

Rest of the book, though, admittedly is interesting for it provides history of various defining institutions of human civilization like tools, language, farming, diseases and organizations in very convenient way. Parts of book are verbose and obvious explanation why diseases evolved from animals to humans goes on to greater length than necessary to make the point. While at no point one comes across explicit bias and explanation pass the scientific inquiring nature of reader, one cannot help wonder if they are mere post-hoc rationalization of things that have happened in certain way, or would have happened in any one way anyway. ( )
1 vote ashishg | Feb 16, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 340 (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
Cavalli-Sforza, Francescosecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
CAVALLI-SFORZA, Luigi Lsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Chueca, FabiánTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Civalleri, LuigiTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Johansson, IngerTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mie HidleTranslatorsecondary 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.
First words
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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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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History. Sociology. Technology. Nonfiction. HTML:

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."??Bill Gates

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion ??as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war ??and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Go

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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

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