Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1033 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.31 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From 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.

From Library Journal
Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs. (LJ 2/15/97)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Grover Gardener does as well with scientific material as he does with more traditional literature, giving it spirit and vitality while sounding as interested in the information as readers will be. Although he doesn't pronounce "bonobo" (pigmy chimp) like the keepers in the zoo, nor "Tenochtitlán" like a Mexican, his technical pronunciation is otherwise flawless. The abridgment to one-third of the original does no serious damage, but only deprives readers the privilege of enjoying more of this Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the evolution of civilization. Few writers could ever take so complex a subject and render it as palatable and memorable as Professor Diamond. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine