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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

(Civilizations Rise and Fall #1)

Jared Diamond

4.03 · Rating details · 320,130 ratings · 11,423 reviews

"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" (Will ...more

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Paperback, 498 pages

Published 2005 by W.W. Norton & Company (first published May 9th 1997)

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Jan 11, 2008 Molly rated it did not like it

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

Shelves: anthropology-and-anth-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 behavior and culture. For ...more

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Dec 10, 2008 Manny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-and-biography, strongly-recommended

[Original review, Dec 10 2008]

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" (manuf ...more

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Dec 15, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: brain-candy, favorites, all-time-favorites-non-fiction, nonfiction

“Why you white men have so much cargo [i.e., steel tools and other products of civilization] and we New Guineans have so little?”

Jared Diamond is a biologist, who had a passion for studying birds, particularly the birds of New Guinea. But as he came to know and appreciate the many native people he met in his work, the question asked by a New Guinean named Yani remained with him. Why was it that westerners had so much relative to New Guinean natives, who had been living on that land for forty ...more

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May 18, 2007 Mike Shapiro rated it really liked it

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-a 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.

...more

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Nov 30, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-non-fiction, non-fiction, history, american-20th-c

It took me a while to complete Diamond's book (and admittedly I also distracted myself with a few Roth novels in the meantime) because of the density of the text and the variety of ideas presented. The central thesis that it is not racial biology that determines the victors in history but rather a complex combination of agriculture, geography, population density, and continental orientation is a fascinating and compelling one. The style is not academic (and did admittedly put me off by using sen It took me a while to complete Diamond's book (and admittedly I also distracted myself with a few Roth novels in the meantime) because of the density of the text and the variety of ideas presented. The central thesis that it is not racial biology that determines the victors in history but rather a complex combination of agriculture, geography, population density, and continental orientation is a fascinating and compelling one. The style is not academic (and did admittedly put me off by using sentences with "!" in them), and yet does come across as the fruit of years (or decades) of research in an astounding number of fields simultaneously: biology, agriculture, history, climatology, sociology, etc. I can understand why Mr. Diamond received accolades and a Pulitzer for this complex work written at the level that the layman, non-scientist can still grasp. The funniest story that struck me was the QWERTY keyboard one which apparently is the least ergonomic design but due to its rapid adoption by typists due to capitalist competition and afterwards its ubiquity once computers became important, it is impossible to dislodge. (I still find it easier to use than the AZERTY one here in France LOL). The one thing that struck me - and here I warn readers that I climb on my soapbox near the Marble Arch for a moment - is the abundance of corroborating evidence for human evolution and development that has solid artefacts and proof going back 40000 years and more by the most precise dating methods available by today's scientists. For anyone with a shred of intelligence to try and say the world is only 6000 years old and created in-state as it were is pure insanity and blindness. And yet, we now have high-placed individuals in the US holding these beliefs and poised to poison American youth with medieval and ignorant ideas such as young-earth creationism. If one is to take reality at face value rather than with massive filters eliminating reason and coherence from it, then one cannot possibly justify believing that all humans came from Adam and Eve and that they were white as snow and racially superior to their offspring. This book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that just because one has white skin, that this is not a determinant in the development of the individual and his/her peers as human beings. It is critical that works like this get wide diffusion in order to debunk racial superiority theories that gave rise to the horrors on Hitler and continue to inform white supremacists and Islamic radicals and all other religious or racial bigots because their underlying fundamentals are based on patently false principles. OK, down from soapbox now. The book was well-written (if a bit repetitive at times) and presents eye-opening and inventive analysis that will help me see the world I live in differently. Highly recommended. Especially in view of the rise of revisionist, white supremacist bullshit. ...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Siria rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

Terrible. This is one of those books which seems at face value as if it has an interesting and persuasive thesis, and indeed there are a couple of reasonable points in here, but by and large Guns, Germs, and Steel is a poorly written book, shoddily argued and riddled with factual errors. Jared Diamond's thesis is that the differences which one can observe in technological and economic development around the world do not result from racial differences but rather from geographical ones: the variet Terrible. This is one of those books which seems at face value as if it has an interesting and persuasive thesis, and indeed there are a couple of reasonable points in here, but by and large Guns, Germs, and Steel is a poorly written book, shoddily argued and riddled with factual errors. Jared Diamond's thesis is that the differences which one can observe in technological and economic development around the world do not result from racial differences but rather from geographical ones: the variety and nutritional value of available crops, the number of animals which could be domesticated, the geographical axes of the various continents. Diamond claims that this is an anti-racist theory because it points out that white people were just lucky, not inherently more deserving or more talented or more resourceful than people anywhere else in the world.

However, Diamond's intention to write an anti-racist book doesn't mean that he succeeded in doing so. There are layers of problematic assumptions and unconscious Eurocentrism underlying his writing, layers which make Guns, Germs, and Steel an uneasy read: you (for the reader whom Diamond seems to hypothesise in the book is a white Westerner--there's no sense that a PoC from, say, Malaysia or Egypt might have picked it up) should not feel a sense of accountability or responsibility or guilt for colonialism or imperialism or the ongoing exploitation of most of the world's population by those living in the developed world. It's no one's fault--it's just geography!

When it comes to assessing the reliability of Diamond's arguments, the fact that there are no footnotes and no full bibliography make that a somewhat difficult task--but I know enough about sub-Saharan African history to know that he characterises several key things incorrectly, and just enough about the history of the Americas to be very suspicious about things that Diamond claims. There are numerous minor factual errors, like saying that "oi" means "sheep" in Irish (p. 343). The Irish word for sheep is "caora", and as far as I know, there's no such word as "oi" (or even "oí") in Irish. This is admittedly minor, but if you indulge in repeated bouts of carelessness like that, you're going to make me suspicious about the factual foundations of the rest of your arguments.

And indeed, while I can't assess the validity of some of Diamond's scientific claims--though the continent axis theory falls apart the more you start to think about it, as does his failure to consider the impact of human alteration of the environment--I do know that I'd expect better historical argumentation from an undergraduate history major. For instance, when about to describe the meeting of the conquistador Pizarro with the Incan emperor Atahuallpa, he says:

What unfolded that day at Cajamarca is well known, because it was recorded in writing by many of the Spanish participants [...] by six of Pizarro's companions, including his brothers Hernando and Pedro. (pp. 68-69)

Which of course is nonsense. What we have is a record of what six individual Spanish men--and no Incans--wanted the Spanish king to think had happened on that day. A moment's thought would tell you that there are multiple problems with using their writings as a straightforward means of assessing anything about Incan culture and society. Rookie errors like that made me roll my eyes extra hard at the epilogue in which Diamond explains to historians what our discipline should look like and how we should think of it. How about no, sir--if you've repeatedly demonstrated a lack of ability to think historically, you don't get to decide what historians should do.

It's also worth pointing out that even if one accepts Diamond's thesis as persuasive, it doesn't actually answer the question he sets out to answer: why it is that European/Western societies set out to establish political and cultural hegemony over the rest of the world and were so successful at it. Just because a society is more technologically or economically complex than its neighbour doesn't mean that it automatically sets out to conquer it--that's a question you can't answer with "geography." You have to theorise power and social structure, and Diamond can't do that. Avoid. ...more

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Feb 29, 2008 Nate rated it did not like it

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 in the 21st century is t ...more

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Nov 22, 2008 Jason Koivu rated it liked it

Shelves: history

Misleading! The actual title should be Germs, More Germs and a bit about Steel And Guns, but not very much on those last two really...I mean, we want to put Guns first because it's more attention-grabbing than Germs, but let's face it, this book is mostly about Germs.

Why has no publishing house knocked down my door trying to obtain my book titling services yet?! ...more

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Oct 08, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, sociology, united-states, science, 20th-century, history, literature

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 trans-disciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of Californ ...more

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Mar 29, 2012 carol. marked it as don-t-count

Shelves: classic, non-fiction, abandoned-without-prejudice

Stopped on page 88 for the time being, because, man, do people ever suck. We historically sucked. But since humans used to invade other humans' territory and do a lot of killing, at least things have changed now.

Oh, wait. ...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Joshua Parkinson rated it really liked it

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 have something t ...more

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Jan 28, 2012 Riku Sayuj rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: r-r-rs, favorites, history-civilizations, reference

Jared sticks to the basic premise and plugs every hole in his argument so well to construct a magnificent explanation of the evolution of societies. What makes the book particularly good is the intimate hands-on experience that Jared has on the wide variety of fields required to attempt a book like this.

The last four or five chapters start to get very repetitive, but except for that Diamond has taken a stunningly large scale view of history that keeps you enthralled throughout the 13,000 years ...more

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Jul 27, 2007 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 I thought about Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, a reflection on human history through the lens of e 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 I thought about Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, a reflection on human history through the lens of evolutionary biology. Diamond, unlike Professor Twist, is seeking answers to real world problems. In this case, he seeks to understand the plight of indigenous peoples and their subordination to European and Asian cultures in light of evolutionary pressures. Even so, Diamond seems awkward in his attempts to justify the ways of the Blind Watchmaker to men as so. One false note comes early in the book, when he departs from his evenhandedness to assure us that not only should we not hold New Guineans to be less intellectually endowed than Europeans (a reasonable enough assumption), but that they are probably intellectually superior. He admits that he can't demonstrate that superiority empirically, so that assertion strikes the reader as an attempt to curry favor by a politically correct reverse bias.

On the other hand, there's a lot of really stimulating and interesting stuff in this book. Diamond talks about: what kinds of foodstuffs are necessary to support civilization; why disease almost always flowed from native Europeans to native Americans (and not vice-versa), whereas Europeans encounter many new diseases when they attempted to enter Africa; why those previous two topics are related; how innovation happens; etc. It seems like there's an interesting fact or point of view whenever you turn the page.

The book seeks a complete explanation for the course of human history. It has that sort of broad, sweeping intellectual appeal that a hefty work of philosophy or science has. For example, after someone learns Newtonian mechanics, he tends to see the entire universe as the interplay between physical forces that are expressed in terms of differential equations. A similar dynamic happens here, where the reader suddenly sees commonplaces in a new light.

As with most grand theories, it's important to see that there are some important limits to the analysis. While we can see why, in broad strokes, European and Asian peoples might have overwhelming advantages in human history in purely biological and geographical terms, Diamond's analysis is of no help in answering historical questions that still might strike us as large, but come within the realm of European or Asian culture, instead of at the border with other peoples. For example, it's hard to see how his analysis adds anything to our understand of conflicts such as the Greco-Persian wars, the rise and decline of Rome, the Napoleonic Wars, or the American Civil War. Certainly these questions are important, and we rightly inquire into agricultural, military, political, and culture causes for these events. In these cases Diamond's analysis is largely impossible, since we are dealing with peoples that share genetics, foodstuffs, climates, terrains, etc.

Perhaps I'm nit-picking. It's an excellent, thought-provoking book. I'd just like to temper the inevitable temptation to view all history through this lens. ...more

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Jul 07, 2007 Trevor rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone wanting to know why we got the cargo

Shelves: evolution, science, history, economics, social-theory

Without overdoing the pun, everything by Diamond shines and shines. This is his greatest work. Occasionally in life you can feel a book shifting the way you see the world, shifting what you thought you knew about the world. There is a documentary made around this book, but read the book - trust me.

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Dec 08, 2020 Orhan Pelinkovic rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, human-evolution, biological-evolution, geography, oceania

Why didn't the indigenous people of the Americas, Oceania, and sub-equatorial Africa conquer Europe and its people? Why was it the other way around?

Why didn't agriculture, cities, the wheel, writing, craftsmanship of metal processing originate in Europe? Why did it instead originate in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) and its surrounding areas? These are some very intriguing questions discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) written by Jared Diamond.

This book i Why didn't the indigenous people of the Americas, Oceania, and sub-equatorial Africa conquer Europe and its people? Why was it the other way around?

Why didn't agriculture, cities, the wheel, writing, craftsmanship of metal processing originate in Europe? Why did it instead originate in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) and its surrounding areas? These are some very intriguing questions discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) written by Jared Diamond.

This book is a brief history of the human evolution of the last 13,000 years with a focus on social evolution, ethnology, and ecology. The book also pays special attention to the regions which boarder the vast Pacific Ocean.

Well, the Europeans discovered and conquered the Americas and Oceania because they were a more advance civilization. The Europeans had firearms, metal weapons, logistical technology that conquered land and sea, written language, centralized political power, and contagious diseases with which they infected and killed the natives, as the Europeans have already become genetically resistant to and acquired an immunity to those contagious diseases.

The reason why the cradle of civilization originated in the Fertile Crescent is due to its specific geographical characteristics of the environment that had more favorable ecological conditions compared to other regions and Diamond states that it had nothing to do with the biology of those people. This region had access to metal based material for their tools and weapons. They were surrounded by animals that could be domesticated for defense, labour, and food. Last but not least, the Mesopotamians had local available plants that were edible and easily cultivated. All in all, in general, the Eurasians had a more favorable environment, a head start, a greater population, larger continent, and this is why they had an advantage on the people of the Americas, Oceania, and sub-equatorial Africa. I am assuming this is part of the story, but I can name several counter arguments. I was expecting a lot more, and I just wasn't satisfied with the arguments presented, nor were they all convincing. I can't recall any creative ideas or clever theories in this book. The influence of culture was discussed, but hardly religion or genetics.

Diamond also very briefly discusses how the development of technology was amplified by a cumulative effect which reminded me of how well Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker (1986) explained the various positive feedback loops and the cumulative effect in biological evolution.

The book is well-written and informative, this is a given, but many things are unnecessarily being repeated throughout the book with too many recapitulations. It could all have been more concise.

(3.5/5.0) ...more

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Jun 08, 2018 Melki rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, audio-book

Diamond attempts to "provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years," AND answer the question of why some cultures thrive while others perish or are conquered by others. There is a mind-boggling amount of information presented: some of it is fascinating, some of it seems repetitive, and overly long. When my husband, who is a big fan of "farming books," thinks that there was WAY TOO MUCH about agriculture. . . well, that kind of tells you something.

I listened to this on audio, (a ...more

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Aug 30, 2015 Darwin8u rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015

“In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.”
- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

description

This is one of those books ...more

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Jun 06, 2014 fourtriplezed rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

I have found this book a bit difficult to write about. It is interesting in that it has gone into areas that I have never really considered. Would I have given thought that the ability to domesticate plants and animals was a consideration when thinking of the continental differences between the east west axis of Eurasia compared to the north-south divide in both the Americas and Africa? Probably not.

I suppose this is a book that is more based on the environment of peoples over the last 13,000 y ...more

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Dec 27, 2015 WarpDrive rated it liked it

Shelves: history_general, owned

This is a thought-provoking, deeply interesting, controversial book investigating the reasons behind the bafflingly different rate of development of human societies in different parts of the world.

The main thesis of the author is that geographic aspects represent the overwhelming ultimate set of causal factors, and they played out mostly at the very beginning of societal development, mainly in prehistoric times.

The author uses very broad brush strokes to develop his main themes, both in geogra This is a thought-provoking, deeply interesting, controversial book investigating the reasons behind the bafflingly different rate of development of human societies in different parts of the world.

The main thesis of the author is that geographic aspects represent the overwhelming ultimate set of causal factors, and they played out mostly at the very beginning of societal development, mainly in prehistoric times.

The author uses very broad brush strokes to develop his main themes, both in geographical terms (he treats the whole of Eurasia plus North Africa as one single entity, which he then subsequently compares with the whole of the Americas, the rest of Africa and Australasia), as well as in temporal terms (the last two thousand years of human history are virtually ignored), and even in political terms (all societies more complex than an egalitarian tribe are defined “kleptocracies” managed by self-serving elites that extract tribute).
This very broad approach is compounded by his methodological tendency to artificially identify and distinguish between ‘ultimate’ explanations and mere ‘proximate’ ones; an approach which brings him to minimize aspects of cultural idiosyncrasies, randomness, and all local cultural factors unrelated to the environment; approach which pushes him to assert that the most critical influences on modern history had already occurred mostly in prehistoric times, and definitely before the birth of Christ, virtually discounting the last two thousand years of history as a foregone conclusion determined by prior developments.
I have the feeling that his view is ultimately based on a Marxist-like type of historical perspective, whereby specific historical events are merely accidents, there is little or no role for chance, randomness and individual action, and where complex feedback loops, culture and ideology, religion, war outcomes and politics are just super-structural elements derived from more fundamental materialistic aspects. This view is now considered obsolete by many mainstream historians (or at least incomplete).

The author also seems to have a pretty “linear” vision of history, whereby the same collection of factors invariably determine the same outcome – my personal feeling is that many historians would disagree with this perspective and state, on the contrary, that one of the complexities of the study of history is that history is not physics, as the interaction “laws” and the independent variables themselves might vary depending on the period and particular sets of circumstances: for example, the weight of geographical factors in more technologically advanced periods as opposed to prehistorical or less advanced eras. And we should always bear in mind that phenomena such as chaotic behaviour lurk even in seemingly simple physical systems, so a deterministic approach to the study of history presents many potential dangers. Even more quantitative and more limited in scope disciplines pertaining to human behaviour (such as economics) have repeatedly proven how identification of context-independent causal chains and prediction of future behaviour can be extremely problematic to achieve.
Yes, it is true that the author pays lips service (in the epilogue, which is the best balanced part of the book) to the irreducible complexity and to peculiar nature of any science based on the study of human behaviour, but this attempt to dilute and balance his geographical determinism is too little too late, IMO (and the author does not fail to re-iterate, even in this section, his faith in a ultimately fully deterministic long chain of causation that can fully explain all main trends of historical development).

There are also some wide generalizations in the book that are questionable at the very least: for example he uses the Spanish American conquests as a model for all European colonial expansion, and he also comes up with claims that are wrong or should be, at least, heavily qualified (such as the horse being the most decisive factor in warfare since it was domesticated 6000 years ago, until WWI – has the author ever heard of Agincourt and Crecy ? And Republican and Early Imperial Rome did not rise to military supremacy due to a superior use of cavalry).
There is also, at the beginning of the book, a really bizarre and totally unsubstantiated claim by the author that “in mental ability New Guineans are genetically superior to Westerners, and they are superior in escaping the devastating developmental disadvantages under which most children in industrialized societies now grow up”. Such a statement is scientifically very dubious (like any similar statements trying promote a naive (if not racist-driven) view to connect genetics with race and intelligence - and what is "intelligence" anyway ?); moreover it appears almost self-contradictory in this book, as the author himself, in the rest of the book, very successfully dismantles any racist claim that the difference rate of development between societies is caused by genetic differences between the races.

Coming back to the main themes of the book: the broad patterns of history, according to the author, are all ultimately caused by essentially “geographical” factors: the availability of a variety of easily domesticable crops facilitating an early adoption of agriculture, of big domesticable animals, and the longitudinal gradient (the Eurasian east-west axis being favourable compared to the North-South axis of the Americas) facilitating or impeding diffusion of agriculture, trade and technology.

It must be said that the author main thesis is argued and documented very convincingly (however I must say that I can't assess the validity of some of the author's scientific claims in fields such as genetics, anthropology, botany, linguistics and evolutionary biology – and the referencing material is strangely lacking, which is slightly suspicious), and the book is brilliantly written, very readable, full with fascinating insights and rich with extremely interesting information in many different fields. It has been a reading pleasure and I learned quite a bit from it.

The author's main theory of the critical importance of geography is well supported by several examples (even though it must be said that the author appears somewhat selective in his analysis, conveniently alternatively over- or under-emphasizing the importance of geographical barriers in the diffusion of agriculture, trade and technology - he also under-emphasizes the important role played by internal wars, competition and migration in the development of Europe and the Middle East in historical times) and the book contains many ideas that are, in my opinion, very important (even if not complete nor conclusive) in the debate over the reasons why some historical patterns diverged so significantly among the different parts of the globe.

It is a pity that the author leaves out so many important factors, and so many questions very partially answered (such as why did Europe gain supremacy as opposed to China, considering that China, soon before the start of the big European expansion, was as advanced – probably more advanced than – its European counterparts ? ).

But make no mistake – with all its problems, it is a nevertheless a good, highly readable, informative, fascinating book, recommended to all lovers of history who want to gain original insights and perspectives into the broad patterns of historical development. I definitely learned many interesting things and gained a better appreciation of geographical factors as significant determinants in the development of human societies. ...more

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Jan 30, 2018 Nandakishore Varma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a terrific book. 😍

One sentence review: Human history is a function of geography.

Detailed review to follow!

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Sep 23, 2013 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Did you ever wonder if there is a certain inevitability in the way world history has evolved? Jared Diamond argues, in effect, that the giant Eurasian continent (Europe and Asia combined) was predestined to take over the world. Everything conspired in its favor: climate, vegetation, population distribution, mineral resources and even bacteria. Compare Eurasia and Australia, for example, and you find that when humans evolved to the point of beginning agriculture, Eurasia had dozens of varieties o ...more

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Apr 22, 2019 Philip Allan rated it really liked it

This is an ambitious book. It seeks to provide a simple rationale to explain why inequalities exist between the peoples of the world. What makes its approach fresh is that the analysis is from someone who is neither an economist nor a historian. Broadly speaking, Diamond pulls this off. His style is readable and his arguments well laid out. His conclusions about the importance in early human history of having the right plants and animals to promote the vital first step for a civilisation – that ...more

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Apr 08, 2019 Lyn rated it really liked it

Jared Diamond asks the question: why did technology develop along different lines and at different times throughout the world and then goes on to study the reasons why.

Using economic, sociological, anthropological, biological and botanical evidence to examine and analyze his hypotheticals, Diamond goes on to map out the world not just in geography but in time, providing a unique human history going back tens of thousands of years and culminating with how we’ve ended up – with some people typing ...more

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May 07, 2008 Rhiannon rated it it was ok

Shelves: science, non-fiction, history

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?"

No, I counter. It just removes the douche-y social Darwinist parts. Plus, i ...more

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Sep 05, 2020 Valliya Rennell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: a-3-stars, x-reviewed-books, c-non-fiction, b-adult

3 stars

Guns, Germs, and Steel was recommended to me by my father. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought of what Jared Diamond says. Generally speaking, this book outlines the different factors that contribute to a society succeeding and thriving, and how these factors have created the world we live in today. To answer my father, I said that I enjoyed it. It made me reflect a lot, it helped me form arguments in my IB ESS class, and in general gave me a nice insight into human history 3 stars

Guns, Germs, and Steel was recommended to me by my father. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought of what Jared Diamond says. Generally speaking, this book outlines the different factors that contribute to a society succeeding and thriving, and how these factors have created the world we live in today. To answer my father, I said that I enjoyed it. It made me reflect a lot, it helped me form arguments in my IB ESS class, and in general gave me a nice insight into human history. Then, he said something that I will try to reflect on in this review: "After reading this, do you think society could have formed any other way?"

Before I get to answering that question, I'll go through a the things that I liked and didn't like about Diamond's work. This book was so unbelievably interesting. It's format made it very easy to follow along, and together it made perfect sense. This helped Diamond strengthen his theses. This organisation also makes this work very accessible, which for me (a person who wants to get more into non-fiction), was a great benefit! There are a bunch of diagrams, graphs, maps, and pictures in this book, which once again, made the reading experience more enjoyable; if you got bored, or got confused, there was sure to be an image soon to make you want to read again. The third thing that I really liked about this was the conversational narration that dominates the book. At times I felt like Mr. Diamond and I were having a conversation about the history of the world. When I switched over to the audiobook for some portions, this was accentuated even more. This style of narration ensured that you never felt like reading a history textbook, which was something I was scared of when entering this novel.

The things that I didn't really like were how the chapters meandered sometimes or just went on and on about the same thing. I feel like 50 pages could be cut. Then again, I am just one person. Another person might find value in how Diamond proves his claims through various examples and scenarios. For me, it just got a bit repetitive and I didn't have the attention span for it. Other than that, when there was a tie-in to something discussed in a previous chapter, then said thing would be proven AGAIN through various examples in the context of whatever is the main topic in this new chapter. Again, someone might find this very interesting, personally it made me a bit tired.

Ok, now to what I actually want to discuss: my father's question. After reading this book, I think that no, there is no other way society could have progressed. Maybe if we would have arisen originally on a different continent, we would be in a different place right now, but I don't know and that is what I find to be so interesting. In the prologue, Diamond sets up a thought experiment where you imagine yourself as travelling back into the past and watching the world starts all over again, but not intervening. I think that if this time-traveller version of me would be very very educated in the ways of history, importance of geography, language, etc. I would be able to predict fairly well where things will be. This makes me wonder if it is possible to predict where we will be in a thousand years or so... Kind of like how Hari Seldon does in Asimov's Foundation.

In conclusion, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good work of non-fiction. I liked how it made me reevaluate how I see the world around me. However, it did have some characteristics that I just didn't really click with. I recommend it, if you like history and are interested in why we are where we are now. ...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Cody VC rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: NOBODY

Recommended to Cody by: the worst professor

Shelves: for-school

I will say this: he makes some interesting points about geographical and geological determinism and the potential validity thereof. Everything else, however, is basically shit. The Pulitzer this book got must have been the world's biggest and most expensive A for effort.

Diamond writes in his introduction that a multi-discipline effort "would be doomed from the outset, because the essence of the problem is to develop a unified synthesis. That consideration dictates single authorship, despite all I will say this: he makes some interesting points about geographical and geological determinism and the potential validity thereof. Everything else, however, is basically shit. The Pulitzer this book got must have been the world's biggest and most expensive A for effort.

Diamond writes in his introduction that a multi-discipline effort "would be doomed from the outset, because the essence of the problem is to develop a unified synthesis. That consideration dictates single authorship, despite all the difficulties it poses." He does go on to mention "guidance from many colleagues," but even so this makes no goddamn sense (p. 26). It is actually possible to find people across disciplines who agree on a single theory - like, say, gravity. I'm using theory in the scientific sense here, where the fact of gravity's existence is obvious but there needs to be a framework of mechanical explanation - and this framework has the potential to be proven wrong. That doesn't change the fact of gravity's existence, it just means that one person's (or several people's) proposed explanation of its mechanics was misconceived. You can see similar approaches in the field of history. What this boils down to is, Diamond is saying right in the bloody introduction to the whole book that he was the only one who could do this glorious project and he didn't want to bring other people in because they might not agree with every single thing he's saying. GOD FORBID.

This book would have benefited from multiple authorship, particularly a partnership with someone who had some actual experience with historical research and thinking, because the incessant lazy errors are impressively offensive - Diamond keeps predicating his argument on such and such historical facts, but the facts he's using are flawed and wrong. Take his chapter on the Spanish invasion of the Americas. First off, he calls the indigenous naive like the extinct megafauna of the previous chapter - I'm not kidding, he uses that exact word and that exact comparison to animals; for somebody who's so avowedly anti-racist that's a fucking awful rhetorical tactic - but the academic offense is that his primary sources for the capture of Inca leader Atahuallapa are, as far as I can tell, Spanish letters to the king and Spanish personal journals. That's it. (Nothing is properly cited in this book, which is another cringe point.) Even a high school student could tell you that you should use and cite primary sources from multiple sides of an event, cite your secondary sources, and use some goddamn critical thinking. If you look at the Inca sources, sure there's some conflicting accounts - same goes for the Spanish - but what's obvious is that they weren't naive. Diamond asserts that Atahuallpa had bad information and it was an obvious trap supported by the advantages of Spanish literacy, but if you look at all the sources the situation is more that he had the right information but chose to be diplomatic in the Incan tradition. Pizarro was just a dick. (Diamond is right about the significance of germs, but that part's a gimme.)

There are a lot of fundamentally flawed arguments like that - e.g. pre-invasion indigenous people on the coast of Australia being described as totally isolated even though the historical record shows them as being brilliant sailors and the numerous islands between Australia and the Asian mainland are reachable by walking in places, or talking about the easy dispersal of animals/crops across a continental "axis" of north/south or east/west despite huge mountain ranges and climate differences across the terrain like in Asia - and his broader assertions are also seriously problematic. Like when he's discussing the supposed advantages of the written word (completely dismissive of pictographs and no mention of signed languages, of course) he name-checks Chinese and Japanese but otherwise devotes his syllabic-complexity argument to Roman-alphabet languages. Which, no. Focusing on the languages that are easiest for you to understand is far from persuasive. (To say nothing of the historical errors in that chapter as well.) And then there's smaller things like the series of photographs of people, all not white and mostly wearing indigenous clothing and unsmiling expressions, which is totally unnecessary - if Diamond's "objection to such racist explanations [of sociocultural differences vis-a-vis a western capitalist definition of success] are is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong," then what the fuck are these pictures doing in here (p. 19)? Why does it matter what these oh so poor, less successful people look like? Jesus christ.

I could go on and discuss the further problem of his trying to fit history into a science framework, when the two have different approaches for a reason - which is, of course, not to say that the philosophies and conclusions of one can't support the other - but I think the point of Diamond's colossal hubris and scholarly failure has been sufficiently made for this review. (There are critical essays by people more professionally accomplished and generally articulate than myself out there.)

Is this the worst book ever? No. But it's still a fucking waste of space. ...more

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Mar 15, 2015 Jokoloyo rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Jokoloyo by: Oni

My first intention reading this book is not to seek knowledge in the real world, but to understand more about the setting/world making of fantasy fiction and science fiction. But this book gave me so much more than that, it gave me answers or some revelations about some of my personal thinking all these years.

I cannot comment much about the contents, there are a lot of reviews that describe the contents well.

Some interesting points on this book for me:
1. In my opinion, this book has pristine des ...more

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Nov 02, 2007 Alex Telander rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-read-in-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 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:

If you liked this review, and would like to read more, go to BookBanter. ...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Elizabeth King rated it it was ok

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.
All well and good…but not so very readabl ...more

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Nov 17, 2011 Daniel Bastian rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed

“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.”

What do Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Francisco Pizarro have in common? Apart from their status as European countrymen, it was the fortuitous confluence of guns, microbes, and steel technology which all but ensured their success at colonizing regions occupied by peoples who lacked such historical fulcrums. It sho ...more

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About Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond

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Jared Diamond is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. He is Professor of Geography at UCLA and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He has dedicated this book to his sons and future generations.

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