Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies | 
|  | | | Title: | Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies | | Author: | Jared M. Diamond | | Publisher: | W. W. Norton & Company | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 April, 1999 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0393317552 / 9780393317558 | | List Price: | $17.95 | | You Save: | $5.74 | | Amazon Price: | $12.21 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 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 Gold Medal.
Amazon.com
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
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Customer Reviews:
• The Foundation For Understanding, Not Just History, But Humanity. 30 June, 2008
I can't add much to the good reviews, but I wanted to suggest that if your child is taking history in school or shows an interest before that, please buy them this book.
This action will reflect the main premise of this theory, it will create the environment for growth.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A23UHVCIGX894Q
• The Big Picture--from Several Angles 12 June, 2008
Pulling together research from a wide variety of fields, Diamond sets out to answer the question of why civilization as we know it developed and flourished in some parts of the world, while other areas were left behind.
The gist: it's all about the geography. In order for civilization to develop, people have to be living in large groups, with food plentiful enough so that some people can be spared from the business of survival to specialize in organization and crafts. In order for that to happen, they must have agriculture and livestock. In order to have agriculture and livestock, they must have either native animals that are domesticable or trading opportunities to obtain them. In other words, it all comes down to where they started from.
I admit to a little hesitation before I chose this book. I read through several reviews, and quite a few reviewers claimed it promoted the concept of racial superiority, and I really didn't want to end up reading several hundred pages of racist propaganda. Still, the majority of the reviews were positive, and there were also quite a few negative reviews complaining that it overlooked the racial factors, so I was intrigued enough by the question to give it a try.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is decidedly not racist propaganda. Diamond bends over backward to ensure that it's not, and even raises the very intriguing question of who's actually smarter--the westerner with the comfortable lifestyle or the jungle native who has to depend on his own knowledge and judgment for survival.
What I enjoyed most about the book was how thorough it was, putting together... well, I was going to say all the pieces of the puzzle, but when it comes to human history, that's just not possible--but enough of the puzzle to see the big picture, rather than just the small segments you get by focusing on a single discipline. It's not enough to describe, for example, how the development of language affected civilization--it's put into perspective along with all the other developments happening at the same time.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2Z44AN3F2IN61
• Pretentious But Shallow 17 June, 2008
G, G, & S is pretentious but shallow and illustrates the corruption of too much of American academia where political correctness masquerades as objective scholarship. It is as false as Lysenko's "biology." Diamond sets up a strawman, "biological differences," and destroys him with his academic beanbags of dubious validity.
I won't recount all of this unfortunate book's deficiencies, as many reviewers have already done so in voluminous detail. It is a strained and selective exposition of history in a vain attempt to support the author's preconceived opinions, i.e., that geography determines everything, which even casual observers would conclude is nonsense. It completely ignores the roles of human creativity, innovation, energy, drive, and motivation. To Diamond everything is predestined by geography. This sounds vaguely religious, i.e., politically correct.
To Diamond, physics, engineering, and mathematics would have been developed in New Guinea, if not for what? Who knows?
An alternative exposition on roughly the same topic is, "Carnage and Culture," by Victor D. Hanson. It displays vastly superior, i.e., objective scholarship.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2JL9CQ1WS2H4R
• Excellent Explanation For Eurasian Historical Hegemony 14 June, 2008
Diamond's final analysis proves a good point. Many dominant countries today are not only in Europe and East Asia, but are also ones that have been largely repopulated by the descendants of those peoples, like the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Taiwan, and Singapore. Other countries rising to power today, like Southeast Asia's "Little Tiger" economies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines), also contain descendants of invading conquerors nearly 10,000 years ago. China and India are now back in power to their historical positions. The Eurasian continent is the only one with a advanced history since the beginning of the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution. Look at South America, and you'll find that the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) are ones with mostly European-descended populations like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, and the poorest ones are the ones with the largest indigenous, native populations like Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. Diamond is so right in this regard.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A28CZHFTWN6PX1
• An Alternative Viewpoint 23 June, 2008
Mr. Diamond must be admired for this epic work on humanity. Is it perfect, of course not, but what is perfect. He gives us a different way to view history and how geography has influnced it. I enjoyed the read and have assigned it to my students for reading and reviewing. The majority of them said it was worth the effort and it has given some instances of lively discussion in the classroom. We should tip our hats to a man who at least gives us something to think about.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2T7TBJM0ETP2M
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