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Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years Paperback – Box set, 30 April 1998
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**WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE**
'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens
Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis?
Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.
An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science that can provide expert insight into our modern world.
'The most absorbing account on offer of the emergence of a world divided between have and have-nots... Never before put together so coherently, with such a combination of expertise, charm and compassion' The Times
- Print length592 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication date30 April 1998
- Dimensions12.9 x 4 x 19.7 cm
- ISBN-100099302780
- ISBN-13978-0099302780
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A book of remarkable scope... One of the most important and readable works on the human past ― Nature
A prodigious, convincing work, conceived on a grand scale ― Observer
This is the book that turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind -- Yuval Noah Harari ― Week
Fascinating, coherent, compassionate and completely accessible ― Sunday Telegraph
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Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; New Ed edition (30 April 1998)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 592 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0099302780
- ISBN-13 : 978-0099302780
- Dimensions : 12.9 x 4 x 19.7 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 3,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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About the author

Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was named one of TIME’s best non-fiction books of all time, the number one international bestseller Collapse and most recently The World Until Yesterday. A professor of geography at UCLA and noted polymath, Diamond’s work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology and history, among others.
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It provides a very interesting and convincing, possibly post-modern, view of the origins of the European Hegemony, sparked by a question from a friend of the author in New Guinea, in effect: why do you white people of European origin have so many material goods and we have so little?
His core thesis is that the origins of this difference are not in racial or even in politics, but in the development of agriculture and the luck of being in the continent (Eurasia) with a primary East-West axis as opposed to Africa or the Americas with primary North-South Axes.
His position is a little more complex and subtle than that, but none the less that is the nub of it.
Diamond does provide some convincing evidence for this view, and outlines his sources in a comprehensive Further Reading section. He masters linguistic, biological, anthropological and archaeological evidence with a mastery few could show (and most of those can’t write!).
However, there are a number of issues with the book, which I found problematic, and inevitably undermine his core argument.
First, his central sociological position is a kind of extreme Hobbesian war of all against all, in which the natural thing to do is murder strangers. But ultimately his argument depends on the tragic history of a single woman in New Guinea.This point deserves to be better developed at the very least, especially since part of his core argument is that New Guinea Highland diet is historically chronically short of protein, which I would have thought plausibly promotes cannibalism and thereby a low value on human life. In any case, I think those who at least acknowledge the possibility of empathy with strangers strengthen their arguments considerably.
Second he categorizes all organised states as kleptocracies, which I think implies the state never has value for the individual. This smacks more of propaganda than scholarship.
So his political position is essentially some form of right wing anarchism: I can accept that (although I might not agree) but there needs to be a better recognition of the implications of this prism on his overall view.
Third, at the end he acknowledges politics and culture may have a critical effect on the ability of a society to achieve their technological and imperial (if that is not too loaded a term) potential.
Against all of these criticisms Diamond might retort that inevitably a book which is so wide ranging and with such an ambitious goal needs to simplify and abbreviate. It simply can’t be more detailed: with over 400 pages in a fairly small typeface. Fair comment, on the whole!
The book is rather old (1997) but so far as I know if anything evidence for his position has been strengthened rather than weakened in the intervening time.
In the end well worth a read, but don’t believe every word!
1) history can be a science through natural experiments, I.e. comparing two cases that resemble in most respects but had resulted in a contrasting outcome and deducing what factors are different and may had led to different outcomes
2) series of environmental luck have led to European domination of the present world. Head start in Plant and animal domestication allowed to put Europeans at massive advantages in conquering other continents - invention of highly effective weapons, immunity against epidemics which originated in domesticated mammals and other inventions
The summary above is vastly oversimplified and readers should learn invaluable lessons by following the authors chain of reasoning which is his scientific endeavour in human history. I was also in awe of thousands of archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists who have produced global human progress from pre-human times. There must be treasure trove of scientific findings by those scholars that we laypeople haven’t tapped yet.
I look forward to reading some of the books suggested in the book and other books and papers that tackle big questions like the one that the author discussed in this book
On the positive side the book introduced me to ideas I hadn’t considered before and has encouraged a desire to find out more how humans developed from primitive hunter gathers to what we are now. In particular, it has a way of looking at human development in a very non-linear way, casts aside a lot of ‘western’ prejudice and opens up better ways of approaching the ideas. The concept of the book is good, it asks the question why does Eurasian (especially European) culture dominate the world? It is not satisfied with the obvious answer because it was in Europe that technology and culture developed to the highest level and empowered the Europeans to send well armed invaders around the world. Nor is it satisfied with citing the Europeans of having this advantage due to its access to agriculture, literature, iron melting etc. It goes deeper and asks why did those things come to be developed to substantially higher levels in Europe and Asia than in Africa, America or Australia. The book puts forward many credible ideas of how this came about. No spoilers you can read them for yourself.
However, there are 3 fundamental flaws in book, the first two are common gripes typical of ‘pop’ science.
Firstly, there is way too much certainty here, despite his early explanation of uncertainty of radio carbon dating he nevertheless goes on to make some very bold claims on very patchy evidence. This is most startling on his theories of how existing on a land mass with big East-West axis is a driver for development. His thesis is highly plausible but hard evidence is distinctly lacking. There is a very small sample set of just 5 substantial landmasses (Eurasia, Africa, Australian North and South America) on Earth each with many other startling geographical differences which all impacted on human development to greater or less degrees. Separating out this one feature as a determinate force, even with a plausible rationale, is fair enough as long as it is presented with suitable scientific doubt – I found that essential ingredient of sound scientific reasoning absent throughout the text. His science is very imprecise, that isn't a fault with the science you can only work with the evidence you have but good science must above all else be honest and contain explicit and proportionate doubt.
Secondly the chapter on evolution is almost comical. Evolution is described in anthropomorphical terms as if it moves with a consciousness and to pre conceived plan. I doubt this is intentional but is worryingly common in popular writing – it absolutely not how evolution works. Writing about it in such terms I suspect is a sub conscious concession to those that want god to have a role in biology – it’s certainly bad science.
These two points are probably more relevant today than 20 years ago, the importance of having a scientifically literate population is utterly exposed with the rise of popularism and the world in the grip of a pandemic. Scientists must write books for popular consumption but when doing so must maintain proper scientific methodology, this is far more important than the subject of the book, a general scientific literacy in the world’s population is not a luxury it is becoming a necessity for our continued survival.
But the big downer for me was the endless repetition. There were plenty of good ideas scattered in the book, but each time he mentioned (for example) germs imported by invaders wiping out local populations while the local populations were not able to pass on their germs to the invaders there is a repeat of basic idea why the germs only work one way. I only need to be told once, maybe twice at most, not tens of times. The text is littered with repeated set piece speeches about the East-West axis, germs, literature, animal and plant domestication, irrigation, sedentary living etc. After the first quarter of the book I was able to detect a repeat rant on the first line and skim the next few pages. Generally I was little wiser by the end of the book than I was after the introduction, there are little gems buried in the latter text but it takes a lot wading through stuff I have already been told to get to. This is a shame by the end of the book I was utterly tired of it despite the fact I felt enlightened by its beginning, I wish I’d lost it after I read the introduction.







