John Clark’s Reviews > Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies > Status Update

One of my friends commented that the title of the book is a bit sensationalist because really, Diamond identifies the ultimate causes of "the Fates of Human Societies" to be the intertwined forces of food production and population pressure. Yes, the title may be sensationalist, but food is really that important.

The history of writing systems is fascinating, and, like so much of Diamond's book, is presented in such a way that the broad strokes are clear and reasonable, and I want to investigate these forces in more detail.

Could a slightly differently configured world have had a dramatically different history?

Diamond provides a fascinating and very approachable depiction of the symbiotic evolution of plants into crops as human culture also evolved. At the same time, this provides a visceral sense of how living things are constantly in motion, adapting to one another.

Diamond provides a concise summary of the proximate argument that disease and better technology favored the conquerors; now we need to see why the conquerors had those in the first place.