Civilization & Culture, evolution, Human Geography, General 

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here, at last, is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life even more intriguing and important than accounts of dinosaurs and glaciers. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world, and its inequalities, came to be. It is a work rich in dramatic revelations that will fascinate readers even as it challenges conventional wisdom.  

Publisher Comments
A global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.
Until around 11,000 b.c., all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.

The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.

He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.

Review
"An artful, informative and delightful book." William H McNeil, The New York Review of Books
Review
"The scope and the explanatory power of this book are astounding." The New Yorker
Review
"A fascinating and extremely important book. That its insights seem so fresh, its facts so novel and arresting, is evidence of how little Americans — and, I suspect, most well-educated citizens of the most important forces of human history." David Brown, Washington Post Book Word

Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 441-471) and index. 

Genre/Form: History
Nonfiction
Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Diamond, Jared M.
Guns, germs, and steel.
New York : W. W. Norton & Company, ©1997
(OCoLC)1206417019
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Jared M Diamond
ISBN: 0393038912 9780393038910 0393317552 9780393317558 9780613181143 061318114X
OCLC Number: 35792200
Performer(s): Read by Grover Gardner.
Awards: Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1998
Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, 1998
Description: 480 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Contents: Prologue. Yali's question : The regionally differing courses of history --
Part One. From Eden to Cajamarca --
Chapter 1. Up to the starting line : What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.? --
Chapter 2. A natural experiment of history : How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands --
Chapter 3. Collision at Cajamarca : Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain --
Part Two. The rise and spread of food production --
Chapter 4. Farmer power : The roots of guns, germs, and steel --
Chapter 5. History's haves and have-nots : Geographic differences in the onset of food production --
Chapter 6. To farm or not to farm : Causes of the spread of food production --
Chapter 7. How to make an almond : The unconscious development of ancient crops --
Chapter 8. Apples or Indians : Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants? --
Chapter 9. Zebras, unhappy marriages, and the Anna Karenina principle : Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated? --
Chapter 10. Spacious skies and tilted axes : Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents? --
Part Three. From food to guns, germs, and steel --
Chapter 11. Lethal gift of livestock : The evolution of germs --
Chapter 12. Blueprints and borrowed letters : The evolution of writing --
Chapter 13. Necessity's mother : The evolution of technology --
Chapter 14. From egalitarianism to kleptocracy : The evolution of government and religion --
Part Four. Around the world in five chapters --
Chapter 15. Yali's people : The histories of Australia and New Guinea --
Chapter 16. How China became Chinese : The history of East Asia --
Chapter 17. Speedboat to Polynesia : The history of Austronesian expansion --
Chapter 18. Hemispheres colliding : The histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared --
Chapter 19. How Africa became black : The history of Africa --
Epilogue. The future of human history as a science.
Responsibility: Jared Diamond.