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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 1997, 480 pages
Paperback:
Apr 1999, 480 pages
'Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope . . . one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.'
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.
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 a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized 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
The Fates of Human Societies
Chapter One
Up to the Starting Line
A suitable starting point from which to compare historical developments on the different continents is around 11,000 B.C. This date corresponds approximately to the beginnings of village life in a few parts of the world, the first undisputed peopling of the Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and last Ice Age, and the start of what geologists term the Recent Era. Plant and animal domestication began in at least one part of the world within a few thousand years of that date. As of then, did the people of some continents already have a head start or a clear advantage over peoples of other continents?
If so, perhaps that head start, amplified over the last 13,000 years, provides the answer to Yali's question. Hence this chapter will offer a whirlwind tour of human history on all the continents, for millions of years, from our origins as a species until 13,000 years ago. All that will now be summarized in ...
Bill Gates
Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University
If you liked Guns, Germs & Steel, try these:
by Rebecca Stott
Published 2013
Read ReviewsDarwin’s Ghosts tells the story of the collective discovery of evolution, from Aristotle to Al-Jahiz, an Arab writer in the first century, from Leonardo da Vinci to Denis Diderot in Paris, exploring the origins of species while under the surveillance of the secret police.
by Iain McCalman
Published 2010
Read ReviewsDarwin's Armada tells the stories of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Joseph Hooker and Alfred Wallace, four young amateur naturalists from Britain who voyaged to the southern hemisphere during the first half of the nineteenth century in search of adventure and scientific fame.
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News of the World
A brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.
The Weight of Ink
by Rachel Kadish
An intellectual, suspenseful, and entertaining page-turner.
Reader Reviews
A richly layered novel of hearts broken seemingly beyond repair and then bound by a stunning act of human devotion.
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