Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Paperback) by Jared Diamond

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07/27/07

Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 0393061310)

Read in January, 2006

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

That bit of Ogden Nash whimsy came into my head as...more

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05/18/07

Mike rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

Read in March, 2006

recommends it for: Folks with some interest in ancient history

Author Jared Diamond's two-part thesis is: 1) the most important theme in human history is that of civilizations beating the crap out of each other, 2) the reason the beat-ors were Europeans and the beat-ees the Aboriginees, Mayans, et. al. is because of the geographical features of where each civilization happened to develop. Whether societies developed gunpowder, written language, and other technological niceties, argues Diamond, is completely a function of whether they emerged amidst travel-...more Author Jared Diamond's two-part thesis is: 1) the most important theme in human history is that of civilizations beating the crap out of each other, 2) the reason the beat-ors were Europeans and the beat-ees the Aboriginees, Mayans, et. al. is because of the geographical features of where each civilization happened to develop. Whether societies developed gunpowder, written language, and other technological niceties, argues Diamond, is completely a function of whether they emerged amidst travel-and-trade condusive geography and easily-domesticable plants and animals.

I'm not sure I agree that why the Spanish obliterated the Mayans instead of visa versa is the most interesting question of human history. (How about the evolution of ideas, or the impact of great leaders and inventors?) But it is an interesting question, and worth exploring. Diamond is a philosophical monist, neatly ascribing just about every juncture in human history to a single cause or related group of causes. Given his extensive background in botany and geology, it makes sense that he would look for the impact of those factors in the human story. Unfortunately, those factors are all he regards as important; he relegates to insignificance the contribution of ideas, innovations, and the decision-making of individuals or cultures. His view is fatalistic, seemingly motivated by a P.C.-era desire to pronounce all cultures equal, and their fates the product of random circumstance.

A contradiction here is that fatalistic viewpoints are incompatible with moral pronouncements. (If nobody can control their actions, who's to blame for anything?) Diamond is condemnatory of the Spanish incursion into Mayan lands, but the logical consequence of his theory is that the Mayans would have done the same to the Spanish if they had been first to develop the musket and frigate. Taking Diamond's theory seriously means we'd have to view imperialism as natural and unavoidable, like the predation of animals, and be unable to criticize any culture's actions whatever.

All that said... this is a fascinating and worthwhile read.
There's no doubt that the factors Diamond identified had some role in human progress, however, and if you can put aside the author's predisposition towards his own field and somewhat sketchy philosophical foundation, the book is a compelling and vivid account of what life was like for the earliest civilizations. Diamond describes the evolution of agriculture, written language, and other indispensable facets of human history, giving us a crash tour through the earliest days of human history. The specialized expertise that ultimately derails Diamond's overview at the same time offers a compelling and detailed view of the rise of mankind.

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01/31/08

Yeshua rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and a band of 168 Spaniards punctured the heart of the Inca Empire and proceeded to capture its emperor, decimate its citizens, and plunder its gold. Why didn’t it happen the other way around? Why didn't the Incas sail to Europe, capture Charles V, kill his subjects, and loot his castles and cathedrals? Jared Diamond attempts to answer this question in Guns, Germs & Steel.

Why have Europeans tended to dominate other peoples on other continents? Does it ha...more

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08/24/07

Radhika rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: Humanists, geographers, omnivorous readers

I give this book 4 stars because it has some very interesting ideas that provoke thought and inquiry. It also offers plausible explanations that often ring true. I don't give it 5 stars because it suffers from certain drawbacks.

I love his analysis and interpretation of causes that show why civilization arose variously in diverse and distinct locations of the planet. I love how his causes make sense. His rejection of race-based politics is quite clear. I like
how his explan...more I give this book 4 stars because it has some very interesting ideas that provoke thought and inquiry. It also offers plausible explanations that often ring true. I don't give it 5 stars because it suffers from certain drawbacks.

I love his analysis and interpretation of causes that show why civilization arose variously in diverse and distinct locations of the planet. I love how his causes make sense. His rejection of race-based politics is quite clear. I like
how his explanations lead us to reexamine patriotism, nationality, group affiliation, judgment of other cultures... There is definitely a lot to learn and what better way to learn than from someone who loves to learn/teach by
engaging.

Contrary to another reader on goodreads, I couldn't wait to get to the "around the world" chapters. That is what the book was building towards in my opinion. Towards explaining why the world today looks like it does.

Jared Diamond is not much into referencing materials which is strange given that he is an academic. One could claim that this book is written for a wider audience and is meant to be more approachable and if so, Diamond makes some very bald statements which are very hard to substantiate in the absence of citations. For instance, his claim that the hard sciences look down upon softer sciences like history. I heard similar claims in graduate school. But where is the evidence for such claims and should they be taken seriously if there isn't supporting scientific evidence for it? I don't doubt that such evidence may exist if he makes the statement but I have a hard time as a reader who needs more proof. He makes a similar bald assertion towards the front of the book about the prevalence of race-based explanations for differences in development which again I know exist based on similar conversations but which I would never take seriously anyway, unless someone could show it to me using science.

There is a lot of redundancy in the book. The four major causes are drummed, driven and pummeled into one. A different organization of the book could have lead to less redundancy and more salient communication of points. That said, he does still get his points across. Lovely pictures in the book. The maps and tables are a little thin on resources but the author tries to provide a reading list toward the end of the book for each chapter.

The PBS show based on his book more pithily stated and demonstrated the unequal distribution of material wealth, health and resources around the globe and made clear who has benefited and at whose expense. It is not very often that any westerner, let alone an academic has so openly shown through their work how viciously parts of the human race have treated certain other parts of it. His book does make me want to go further back and look also at what lead to racial distinctions in the first place.

In the new edition of the book, there is an especially interesting chapter on Japan and the Japanese people and language and how they might be Korean in ethnicity. This may not go down well with a Japanese audience with their extreme nationalism and their emphasis on superiority over neighboring cultures. However, it is perfectly plausible and a fascinating read.

--
www.aprilandradsdiablog.blogspot.com (less)

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01/11/08

Molly rated it:

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bookshelves: anthropology-and-anth-theory

recommends it for: ONLY people in Anthropology with a great understanding of theory.

This is what happens when you take an intelligent person, and casually make a few mentions of a field of study they have no knowledge of.

Mr. Diamond, NOT an anthropologist, takes Marvin Harris' theory of cultural materialism and uses it to explain everything in life, history, and the current state of the world.

Materialism is a way of looking at human culture which, for lack of a better way to explain it easily here, says that people's material needs and goods determine be...more

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06/05/07

Joel rated it:

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bookshelves: booksthatalmostkilledme

Read in October, 2000

When the Dropkick Murphies were at the height of their popularity, I'd often have this awkward conversation where someone would ask me what I thought of them and I'd say I didn't like them. Their fans were really evangelical for some reason, so I'd usually be pressed to explain myself. I'd list the reasons: songwriting so-so, macho bullshit, Americans trying to play up their Irish roots almost always sound silly and, finally, that I found the working-class oi!/skin tradition they were vaguely ro...more When the Dropkick Murphies were at the height of their popularity, I'd often have this awkward conversation where someone would ask me what I thought of them and I'd say I didn't like them. Their fans were really evangelical for some reason, so I'd usually be pressed to explain myself. I'd list the reasons: songwriting so-so, macho bullshit, Americans trying to play up their Irish roots almost always sound silly and, finally, that I found the working-class oi!/skin tradition they were vaguely rooted in to be distasteful because of its racism and xenophobia. At this point, some faux-proletarian yo-yo would always step out of the woodwork and give me his "all skinheads aren't nazis" speech. I found this really, really irritating. I didn't say all skinheads were nazis dude, I said that skinhead culture, with a few exceptions (SHARPS, Redskins -very much peripheral groups) always seemed very comfortable with a moderate level of racism, xenophobia, etc. This shouldn't have been news to anyone -The 4 Skins, of "One law for them" fame were obviously not nazis. Neither were the Anti-heroes, but it didn't stop them from being Republican assholes in at least half of their songs. Deliberately misreading this argument as the "all skins are nazis" was and is classic straw man stuff.

I feel the same way about Guns, Germs and Steel. Try it: Next time someone asks you about the book (and you will be asked -it's still extremely popular), say you found it to be a sneaky return to the race sciences (and pseudo race sciences, like climactic band theory) of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some blowhard will immediately start explaining to you as he or she would to a four-year-old that Diamond's thesis isn't racist because he attributes the relative success and failures of different groups to environment, not biology.

This is dumb -he's working from a very decrepit Hegelian notion of historical progress and populating it with winners and losers, just like the Social Darwinists before him. His innovation is to ascribe the losers' losing to them happening to be in places where the environment required little modification to support stable societies, causing them, over thousands of years, to slack off. He's simply substituted environment for biology as a primary cause. Because the changes he's invoking happen over tens of thousands of years, whether they are "caused" by race or by environment is beside the point. (less)

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01/21/08

Elizabeth King rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

Germ Guns & Steel

It is a thesis,
His thesis being; that all animals are created equal… but not all animals sleep in a bed with sheets.
Why?
Because in addition to needing tree for wood to make looms, herders to shear sheep & weavers to make sheets, you also need (DHU) SHEEP.
Yep, if you are unlucky enough to be born on a continent or onto part of a continent with only anteaters, there is no fucking way you are going to get sheets, no matter how smart you are.
...more

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01/23/08

Deborah rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

Read in January, 2008

Having read Charles C. Mann's 1491 immediately before Guns, Germs, and Steel, I was all-too aware of the dated nature of many of Diamond's assumptions about the New World. (And therefore I would highly recommend 1491 to anyone interested in learning about the latest and greatest developments in knowledge concerning the early history of the Americas.) This seed of doubt concerning the accuracy of Diamond's assumptions about the Americas prevented me from fully appreciating what he had to say ab...more Having read Charles C. Mann's 1491 immediately before Guns, Germs, and Steel, I was all-too aware of the dated nature of many of Diamond's assumptions about the New World. (And therefore I would highly recommend 1491 to anyone interested in learning about the latest and greatest developments in knowledge concerning the early history of the Americas.) This seed of doubt concerning the accuracy of Diamond's assumptions about the Americas prevented me from fully appreciating what he had to say about the histories of the other continents, of which I am even less familiar.

True, the theories promoted in Diamond's book are not disrupted by the accuracy of details concerning the peoples and societies under discussion, but this raises another concern for me: the theories are so generalized, they don't suffer for the potential inaccuracy of described events. In other words, instead of starting with objective histories (and or/references to ongoing research into such histories), the book starts with a central premise and cites historical examples to support that theory.

The central theory may be summarized as follows:
* People with agriculture can produce food surpluses
* Food surpluses can support larger populations
* People located in geographical areas with animals to domesticate were able to use such animals for labor as well as meat
* Large populations with food surpluses can support artisans and bureaucrats
* Artisans and bureaucrats lead to more complex social structures and technical innovations (tools, weapons, metallurgy)
* Dense populations (especially those with domestic animals) contract and evolve immunities to germs and diseases
* Eurasian populations, due to favorable conditions for agriculture and their head-start on many other populations around the globe, acquired the "guns, germs, and steel" to conquer populations lacking the equivalent weaponry, diseases, and technology.

While the central premise makes general sense, I think it's important to acknowledge that it represents a generality, and thus offers an over-simplified view of human history. Considering the fact that this book leans so heavily on theory, I am surprised that book stores typically shelve it in History and Science sections, rather than Philosophy.

After that long disclaimer, I can say that the overall content was interesting. I especially enjoyed the section about the process of domesticating plants and animals. It had never really occurred to me that some plants and animals simply cannot be domesticated, or that the yields of some plants made the domestication of others less desirable or completely unnecessary.

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11/02/07

Alex rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

bookshelves: books-read-in-2006

Read in July, 2006

GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES BY JARED DIAMOND: This is one of those books that takes you a while to read -- it's pretty heavy non-fiction -- and yet at the end of it, you feel like Hippocrates, a Muslim scientist, or Leonardo Da Vinci must have felt at the realization of a great discovery. The Eureka! moment. This book is kind of like the movie Hotel Rwanda: the movie was life-altering for me, and just made every other movie that came out that year seem tawdry and unimpor...more GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES BY JARED DIAMOND: This is one of those books that takes you a while to read -- it's pretty heavy non-fiction -- and yet at the end of it, you feel like Hippocrates, a Muslim scientist, or Leonardo Da Vinci must have felt at the realization of a great discovery. The Eureka! moment. This book is kind of like the movie Hotel Rwanda: the movie was life-altering for me, and just made every other movie that came out that year seem tawdry and unimportant; it was one of those movies that everyone should see (especially Americans and Western Europeans) just to understand the world and its history better. Guns, Germs, and Steel is one of those books that everyone should read to better comprehend their existence at this specific moment in time.

The premise of the book is revealed in the prologue in a conversation between the author and a New Guinea native who lives his very simple life in Stone Age conditions. The thesis that arises in their conversation is what specific events led to the fact that Europeans were the ones to reach New Guinea and interact with its people, and why it wasn't the New Guinea people to develop the technology and abilities to travel the world and make first contact with the Europeans.

With the concept in place, Diamond sets about doing this in his conversational and, quite frankly, mind-blowing and ingenious way. As a professor, with studies in anthropology and biology, he has an astounding way of seeing things and being able to explain ideas in a simple manner that make so much sense and you're left saying to yourself: "Oh, that's how that happened," or "that's why it's like that." At times he can bog you down with details, mainly because he explains them on minutest and seemingly most insignificant level (such as different seeds around the world). And yet you are left with that adage of chaos theory: everything on this planet happens for a reason and has a knock-on effect.

Some of Diamond's ideas that I found and still find most astonishing include:

The reason the continent of Eurasia was able to develop to a much more advanced level than the rest of the world, with its complex empires, cradles of civilizations, and large amount of farming and domesticated species was due to its latitude on a specific east-west axis. The other continents -- North and South America, Africa, Australasia -- are all on a north-south axis. What does this difference mean? For one, climate is greatly changed the further north or south ones goes, which has an effect on the migration of people, animals, and plants, as well as the spread of information, technology and culture. Because of this, Eurasia was able to develop more crops and have them spread around the continent through trade, as well as the spread of domesticated animals, culture and more importantly, technology. The other continents did not have this ease, which Diamond explains in clear detail with facts and dates.

Of course, I am vastly over-simplifying the book and it's really necessary for one to peruse its pages to get the full understanding. Another concept that I was very happy to be made so clear is the explanation of why whites conquered most of the world was not because they were a superior race in any way. And how is this simply explained? To use Jared Diamond's example:

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12/10/08

Manny rated it:

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bookshelves: history, reviews-you-might-like, strongly-recommended

Read in March, 2007

I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn't known before I read it. Jared Diamond has clearly had a more interesting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world. He says he got the basic idea from a conversation he had back in the 70s with a friend in New Guinea. His friend, who later became a leader in the independence movement, wanted to talk about "cargo" (manufactured goods, techn...more I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn't known before I read it. Jared Diamond has clearly had a more interesting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world. He says he got the basic idea from a conversation he had back in the 70s with a friend in New Guinea. His friend, who later became a leader in the independence movement, wanted to talk about "cargo" (manufactured goods, technology). "Why is it," he asked, "that you Europeans have so much more cargo than we do?" Diamond thought he had come up with a good question, and wrote the book in an attempt to answer it.

The core of Diamond's explanation is that Europeans were essentially lucky in two respects. First, we have unusually many easily domesticable plant and animal species. Second, since Europe is oriented East-West rather than North-South, a species which is domesticated in one part of Europe has a good chance of thriving in another, so there are many opportunities to swap farming technology between different areas. It helps that there is an easily navigable river system, and also that there are no impassible deserts or mountain ranges. These conditions are not reproduced in most other parts of the world; Diamond has a range of interesting tables, showing how few useful domesticable species there are elsewhere. Because we got efficient farming earlier than most other people, we also got cities and advanced technology earlier, and everything else followed from that initial lead we established.

One objection you could make is that it wasn't luck, but rather that Europeans were more enterprising than people in other areas about finding good species to domesticate. Diamond's answer to this is fairly convincing. Having lived extensively with pre-industrial people, he says that we city-dwellers just don't understand how well they know their flora and fauna, and how active their interest in them is. I guess a New Guinea tribesman would, conversely, be surprised at how quickly word gets around on the Internet when a cool new website appears. Basically, what he's saying is that pre-industrial people tried everything that could be tried, and when they didn't find anything good, it's because it wasn't there. Systematic studies by modern scientists do seem to support this conclusion.

Another criticism some readers have leveled at Diamond is that he makes history completely deterministic - once the geography was fixed, everything that happened after that was inevitable. I don't actually think that's fair. Diamond is open about the fact that his theories make one embarrassingly incorrect prediction: if it was all about being first to domesticate plant and animal species and set up efficient farming, then China should be the world's preeminent civilization. Even though he makes some attempt to explain why this isn't so, there does right now seem to be a fair case for saying that it's not only geography.

Luckily, George W. Bush has been working hard to try and smooth things out. If the Western world can just arrange two or three more leaders like him, all of Diamond's data will hopefully come out the way it's supposed to, and the last few hundred years of Western history can be written off as a statistical blip. Way to go, Dubya!

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04/02/08

Miriam Axel-lute rated it:

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bookshelves: big-ideas-nonfiction, formative-non-fiction

Read in June, 2008

recommended to Miriam by: Jon Spaihts
recommends it for: just about anyone

Well, I understand why this got a Pulitzer. I hope every student is having to read it in high school. I'm afraid they're not.

Although Diamond's main purpose is to answer the question "Why did the peoples of some continents conquer and dispossess others?" in a non-racist fashion (and succeeds convincingly), the book in many ways is a history of the world, and one less Eurocentric and less focused on irrelevant details than many whose point is explicitly trying to do th...more
Well, I understand why this got a Pulitzer. I hope every student is having to read it in high school. I'm afraid they're not.

Although Diamond's main purpose is to answer the question "Why did the peoples of some continents conquer and dispossess others?" in a non-racist fashion (and succeeds convincingly), the book in many ways is a history of the world, and one less Eurocentric and less focused on irrelevant details than many whose point is explicitly trying to do that.

This was one of those awesome books that blew my mind in almost every chapter with some fact or analysis that threw something I knew or thought I knew about the world into a totally different light or explained how something got the way it was. (For example, my nerdy self loved the description of how people go about starting to domesticate plants, why we have domesticated almonds but not acorns, stuff like that.)

Diamond uses a mixture of ecological history, linguistics, and archeology to make a pretty concise and well-supported argument that a few things—suitable domesticable plants, suitable domesticable animals, east-west vs north-south axis, and size—led to the large differences in development of technology, epidemic diseases, writing, and political organization that allowed, for example, Europe to conquer the Americas. It's a fascinating tale that everyone should know.

I especially appreciate the perspective that comes from his choice to focus in detail on what happens when cultures collide in areas outside the Europe-Americas story. The story of the South Chinese expanding into the Indonesian archipelago and Polynesia, for example, allows this American reader to not only become a much better-educated world citizen, but to think about the issues in a less familiar context where I have fewer knee-jerk associations.

While Diamond bends over backward, and rightly so, to make clear that there's not only nothing inherent in different people's genes that led them to develop "civilization" at different speeds, he also tries to be clear early on that there's nothing inherently wonderful about civilization either. I know from another paper of his that hunter-gatherers actually enjoyed better physical health than settled farmers. (He does slip from this from time to time, though, and starts talking as if it's too bad not to invent any given thing there is to invent.)

But still, his account leads right to, yet doesn't address at all, some hard questions: Was/is it inevitable that those who did accidentally acquire food production and its advantages address the population pressures that arise from food production by overrunning and massacring in cold-blood other societies? (It is sobering and instructive to remember how much of that had already happened long before 1492.)

Should we care about the extermination of human populations and their languages? (It seems that the early human-caused mass extinctions of large mammals had *huge* effects on continental competitiveness: might loss of human cultural diversity do the same?)

Or, perhaps more relevant to today's world: recognizing that the advantages held by the global North were not "earned" or "deserved," is there justification for us to continue wielding our economic power to maintain that disparity rather than letting/helping other areas either "catch up" or remain at the complexity level appropriate to their environment?

Although Diamond's neutral political/moral stance irritated me at times (mostly when it bordered on "it's inevitable that human societies are self-centered warmongers"), I think it was the right choice for the book--those are important questions, but ones that his analysis should contribute to, not vice versa. He even offers a bit of a look at an answer when he starts, tentatively, to explore why Europe went a conquerin' overseas and China, which alone by his measures could also have done so, didn't (yet).(less)

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03/12/08

Curtis Abbott rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

bookshelves: history

Read in January, 2005

Before buying and reading this book, I read some reviews, and frankly, they didn't inspire me. They talked about it being a history of the world, they talked about its immense, ambitious scope. Such talk causes my crap detectors to tingle. I did finally buy it after reading a laudatory review by someone I respect. And I'm glad I did, because I found it to be absolutely top notch. The phrase "history of the world" misguides because the book is entirely about pre-history. The story...more Before buying and reading this book, I read some reviews, and frankly, they didn't inspire me. They talked about it being a history of the world, they talked about its immense, ambitious scope. Such talk causes my crap detectors to tingle. I did finally buy it after reading a laudatory review by someone I respect. And I'm glad I did, because I found it to be absolutely top notch. The phrase "history of the world" misguides because the book is entirely about pre-history. The story it tells is historical in nature, but since it is about societies for which we have no written histories, the nature of the evidence is different, and that is one key to its value. The book is a superb assemblage of evidence from different disciplines, mainly genetic analysis, archeology (including non-human fossil evidence), and linguistics, with a smattering of anthropology. This evidence is woven – with original analysis – into a story of early human history.
The result is a story that isn't always pretty but that hangs together well and seems better defended – hence more believable – than I would have thought possible. I suppose this is the origin of those "ambitious scope" comments in the reviews I distrusted. I could not have imagined before reading this book that so much about human pre-history could be inferred.
The writing is strong as well: cogent, well paced, never overbearing. Diamond has a gift not only for writing clearly, but for helping you to understand why you should care. For example, even though his scope includes inference of pre-historical migrations and developments (both cultural and technological) throughout the world, he organizes his presentation in terms of a trenchant theme – why did the European cultures win out over so many others? Why did the Europeans colonize Africa, South America, and so on? Why didn't the Bushmen, or the Australians, or the Incas invade Europe?
And this gift extends to well-chosen personal anecdotes from Diamond's rather unusual life. He personalizes the key question (why the Europeans won) by having it come from the mouth of a Papuan politician who buttonholes Diamond on a beach, asking why the Europeans have so much "cargo" and the New Guineans so little. He illustrates the challenges of Australia by telling stories of his own adventures there as well as those of some Europeans (who died there) in the 19th Century.
By bringing together evidence from a number of disciplines, synthesizing it, and writing about it in an accessible way, Diamond has done something important. It has always been said that the reason to pay attention to history is to learn more about who we are. I believe that this book can be even more powerful in that endeavor because of the vast period (13000 years) and scope (the whole world) it covers, even though the lack of a written record limits the amount of detail. I for one found it stimulating, eye-opening, maybe even life changing.
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09/27/07

Marissa rated it:

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Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: people who need help falling asleep before bed?

UPDATE: I closed the file on this one I had a dinner-party conversation last Friday that began with someone saying, "You know, almonds are one of the oldest domesticated plant species in the world." And I said, "Oh yeah! That's right! I think I learned that in 'Guns, Germs and Steel.'" And the other person said, "Oh yeah, I think you're right" (P.S. I'm paraphrasing), and we both sort of said, "Right before Jared Diamond put me to sleep." So, as you can se...more

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12/15/08

Will rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

bookshelves: all-time-favorites---non-fiction, non-fiction

Read in February, 2000

Diamond seeks to dispel the myth that humans of different geographic and racial origins have inherently varying mental capabilities. The arguments he seeks to counter are those stating that since "civilization" came to full flower in the "western" countries (white) and not in places where other races dominated, that this indicated an innate superiority by Caucasians. He provides a stunning analysis of why civilization emerged in the places in which it did. He tells us of the ...more

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05/07/08

Rhiannon rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

bookshelves: history, non-fiction, science

Read in May, 2008

I have this awesome picture in my head in which Jared Diamond did not write this book. He instead wrote a detailed, engaging account of the history of plant and animal domestication.

"But Rhiannon," you might say, "doesn't that remove his entire thesis, that geography determined just about everything about the course of human civilization?"

And, I would respond yes, it does.

"And, isn't that kind of removing the whole book?"

...more

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05/24/07

Flint rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

bookshelves: history, nonfiction, science

Guns, Germs and Steel is a good book, and I suggest you follow up with reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

However, if you find yourself interested in primatology and evolutionary biology, I don't suggest you read Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee. Instead, I recommend Frans de Waal's Our Inner Ape, unlike Diamond, de Wall doesn't ignore Bonobos.

I do have one significant disagreement with Diamond, the degree which he is a material determinist. While I...more

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11/19/08

Jefke rated it:

(review of isbn 1565115147)

Read in May, 2008

English at te bottom.

In het nederlands: "Zwaarden, paarden en ziektekiemen" Ik heb de Engelse versie gelezen.

Ik heb dit boek als luisterboek beluisterd ipv gelezen. Na het lezen van "Ondergang" of "Collapse", had ik trek naar meer Jared Diamond.
Een Papoease (autochtone) vriend van Jared vraagt hem waarom de Europeanen de wereld veroverd hebben en niet de Papoea of Indianen... Diamond toont in dit boek aan dat het niets met verschil in i...more

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08/21/08

Julianne rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

bookshelves: non-fiction

My three-star rating has nothing to do with the quality of the ideas in this book; I think they're all top-notch. My lukewarm response has to do instead with their presentation.

Jared Diamond's prose is very readable but prolix. How, one might ask, could I find prolix a book which purports to condense the entire history of humankind into 425 pages? (As Diamond himself points out, compressing 13,000 years of history into roughly 400 pages works out to "an average of about one pag...more My three-star rating has nothing to do with the quality of the ideas in this book; I think they're all top-notch. My lukewarm response has to do instead with their presentation.

Jared Diamond's prose is very readable but prolix. How, one might ask, could I find prolix a book which purports to condense the entire history of humankind into 425 pages? (As Diamond himself points out, compressing 13,000 years of history into roughly 400 pages works out to "an average of about one page per continent per 150 years, making brevity and simplification inevitable" (408). My answer is simply that Diamond does not actually condense 13,000 years of human history into 425 pages but rather picks and chooses which years with which corresponding phenomena on which continents are most relevant to his thesis. In order to prove that "history followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people's environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves" (25), Diamond traces the domestication of plants and animals, the origins of agriculture, the emergence of crowd diseases such as Bubonic Plague and measles, the rise and spread of techological innovations like metallurgy and writing, and the seemingly autocatalytic process that promotes the development of large complex political entities from small, less complex ones. But "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is not a comprehensive treatment of the Black Death any more than it is a primer for understanding the development of metallurgy. In other words, he skips a lot, which I agree is inevitable; however, my beef is that in addition to skipping a lot, he repeats himself a lot, in effect writing a book that is not so much too long or too short as it is inefficient--prolix.

Diamond states the same ideas over and over again, and he always articulates BOTH the affirmative and the negative formulations, seldom omitting words that really could be ommitted without interfering with itelligibility: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people's environments, NOT because of biological differences among peoples themselves" (25); "the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia AND later, or not at all, on other continents" (92); "the reason for the failure of Native Americans to domesticate North American apples by the time Europeans arrived lay neither with the people nor with the apples....INSTEAD, the reason Native Americans did not domesticate apples lay with the entire suite of wild plant and animal species available to Native Americans" (156). While I agree that such a writing style is very clear and understandable (readable), surely after the first articulation of each idea and component, bolstering idea, Diamond could speed things up a bit?

But no, in fact, his 18th chapter (the penultimate chapter, not including epilogue, and entitled "Hemispheres Colliding") is an entirely redundant reformulation of ideas previously articulated, often referencing the exact same examples already referenced. This is evidenced by Diamond's tendency to include phrases like "in Chapter 9 we encountered," "as I explained in Chapter 11," and "as we saw in Chapters 5 and 10..." This, along with his tendency to provide overview (as in the Prologue: "Part 4...applies the lessons of Parts 2 and 3") as well as suggestions like "if we begin by comparing Figure 19.2 with Figure 19.1..." that contribute to the unfortunate impression on the part of the reader that he/she is reading the incomplete novelization of a textbook--a hitherto unknown literary hybrid.

This is not to say that Diamond has not ultimately provided a service to humanity by writing "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or that his arguments are unconvincing or that he never provides us with an arresting phrase or that the book is devoid of colorful and illustrative anecdotes. The very basis for the book rests in a personal experience of Diamond's in New Guinea in 1972 ("Yali's Question"); and I especially like the phraseology of the final sentence of Chapter 19, "...the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate." And one certainly cannot fail to be struck by the originality of some of his ideas, such as the orientation of the continents' major axes (East-West vs. North-South) having played a greater role in the differences between human societies than we have previously recognized. Overall, this book is very accomplished and worth reading.

However, Diamond gradually chips away at the various misconceptions, errors, and prejudgments that cloud our understanding of human prehistory and history in the manner of a slow-moving stream or a very patient archaeologist. Maybe he imagines that this gradual approach is necessary for changing slow-moving or simply out-of-touch minds in which repetition might accomplish what erudition might not, though I really can't imagine such individuals, let alone the genuine racists whose views Diamond is avowedly rebutting making it through the book. But really (to borrow a page out of Diamond's intellectual repertoire), I believe this book could be intellectually stronger, aesthetically superior, and ultimately more influential if Diamond repeated himself less while articulating more.(less)

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04/27/08

Monica rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

I had to write a paper on this book for my first class in graduate school. I am going to look to see if I still have it...hold on...I am totally pasting it in:

“I’ve set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years.” While Diamond’s explanation of his prize-winning book’s goal is clearly oversimplified, the impetus for writing the book is not: while doing research in New Guinea, a native frie...more I had to write a paper on this book for my first class in graduate school. I am going to look to see if I still have it...hold on...I am totally pasting it in:

“I’ve set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years.” While Diamond’s explanation of his prize-winning book’s goal is clearly oversimplified, the impetus for writing the book is not: while doing research in New Guinea, a native friend named Yali asked him “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [metal tools, weaponry, the material stuff of civilization], but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
While many scientists in the past have rushed to answer Yali’s question with the overtired answer of “race,” Diamond takes another route. He claims the differences in the long-term histories of people from around the world have been due not to innate differences in the people themselves, but rather their varied environments. Diamond backs his thesis up with examples like that of the Moriori people. In 1835 the Moriori, who lived on Chatham Island, 500 miles south of New Zealand, were attacked and brutally slaughtered by 500 Maori who arrived on their island by boat. Though the Moriori outnumbered the Maori by more than two to one, they were peaceable hunter-gatherers who were entirely inexperienced at war, lacked strong leadership and access to even the simplest technology. What makes this encounter interesting is that both groups were descendants from a common ancestor. Several Maori people had broken away and settled Chatham Island hundreds of years earlier. During the time they lived apart both groups evolved in different directions, with the Maori on mainland New Zealand embracing complex technology while the Moriori on Chatham Island did not; they remained hunter-gatherers while the Maori followed a lifestyle of intensive farming.
Diamond often cites Polynesia as a “natural experiment” because a variety of different islands – all with different levels of isolation, climate, productivity and geological and biological resources – were colonized by the same founding population, much like Chatham Island was. However, despite their ability to trace the same bloodline, these populations diverged. Diamond goes on to explain that these different populations, all biologically the same, went on to develop different technology at different rates, the most important of those being farming and domesticating plants and animals. Farming was essential to accumulating food and storing surplus, thus allowing non-food producing specialists (those in the military, in government, etc) to move the society ahead rather than keeping it in a constant hunter-gatherer state. Diamond, who has spent many years doing research in Polynesia, highlights examples where societies on some islands capitalized on their environment while others were hindered by what they found on theirs.
Readers have to wait until the end of the book to get some of the juiciest bits of information pertaining to more recent history. The chapter “The Future of History as a Science” (described as “alone worth the price of admission” by the Los Angeles Times) expands on topics like why Europe ended up dominating the New World when China, India and the Fertile Crescent region had, by all rights, taken the lead thus far economically, technologically and ecologically. By pointing out the smallest of decisions that lead to the biggest of mistakes – a power struggle between two factions in China led to the grounding of their enormous fleet and the dismantling of shipyards, paving the way for Europeans and the bumbling Christopher Columbus to discover America – Diamond easily shows how countries that appeared to have all the advantages or “head starts” as he calls them could fall behind. This chapter also delves into the fascinating effects and almost-effects of what he calls “idiosyncratic people” – where one person could have and at times in fact did sway the course of history. For example, what if Hitler had been killed, rather than simply wounded, in an assassination attempt in 1944? Or better yet, what if Hitler had been killed in a car accident that took place in 1930? If the driver of a truck that had collided with Hitler’s vehicle had hit his brakes a fraction of a second later, “the form of an eventual World War II would probably have been quite different…” Through these examples, Diamond discusses how such individual idiosyncrasies throw wild cards into the course of history. After reading chapter upon chapter that shows the smallest of changes taking place over 13,000 years or more, “The Future of History as a Science” provides a nice dichotomy to the earlier parts of Guns, Germs, and Steel.
If there is a flaw with Diamond’s award-winning book, it is the overwhelming amount of time covered in the book as well as a windfall of information for the reader to digest. While his examples support his beliefs, at times Diamond can get wordy in his explanations. The Los Angeles Times got it right by saying “reading Diamond is like watching someone riding a unicycle, balancing an eel on his nose and juggling five squealing piglets” – he gets your attention, but sometimes the massive amount of information can be overpowering.
Diamond himself is the first to admit that compressing 13,000 years of history on all continents into a 400-page book can be oversimplifying human history. But he also hopes it makes others interested in the challenge of developing that history as a science. And this book proves to be the perfect springboard.
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02/29/08

Nate rated it:

(review of isbn 0739467352)

Read in March, 2007

This may be the most over-rated book in the history of book rating. The point he is making is that we in Western Civilazation haven't built skyscrapers, made Moon landings, mass produced automobiles, eradicated polio (or for that matter lived indoors with running water) while aborigines in certain remote outposts still hunt and gather in isolated tribes because we are inherently any smarter or more industrious than those individuals. Of course he is mostly right, but why is this considered suc...more

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