Guns, Germs and Steel

The Fate of Human Societies

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history.
 
Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.  Diamond also dissects racial theories of global history, and the resulting work—Guns, Germs and Steel—is a major contribution to our understanding the evolution of human societies.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Artful, informative, and delightful.... There is nothing like a radically new angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject, and that is what Jared Diamond has done.—William H. McNeil, New York Review of Books

An ambitious, highly important book.—James Shreeve, New York Times Book Review

A book of remarkable scope, a history of the world in less than 500 pages which succeeds admirably, where so many others have failed, in analyzing some of the basic workings of culture process.... One of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.—Colin Renfrew, Nature

The scope and the explanatory power of this book are astounding.—The New Yorker

No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition. —Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University

Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so. . . . Now [Guns, Germs, and Steel] must be added to their select number. . . . Diamond meshes technological mastery with historical sweep, anecdotal delight with broad conceptual vision, and command of sources with creative leaps. No finer work of its kind has been published this year, or for many past. —Martin Sieff, Washington Times

[Diamond] is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English, and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity has developed. . . . [He] has done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer. . . . A wonderfully interesting book.—Alfred W. Crosby, Los Angeles Times

An epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority.—Thomas M. Disch, The New Leader

Compelling pre-history and emergent history

This is a fascinating and foundational work that takes a topic (for me) shrouded in obscurity (how and why did civilization emerge in the pattern it did around the globe), and provides a vivid, detailed, and substantially convincing explanation. Thanks to GGS, I see world and cultural history with new eyes. That is pretty much the highest praise I can think of for a book.

I have a personal policy of ignoring (or at least trying to ignore) negative narrator reviews, as I find them always overstated. This reading is on the dry/flat/dull side, but it is still professional. The book is great and one of the most stimulating I have ever listened to. It is dense, but if you don't like fact, analysis, and theory, you wouldn't seek out this sort of book. Extremely highly recommended. It will change the way you see the world.

Great book, not the best reading

If you could sum up Guns, Germs and Steel in three words, what would they be?

This book really gives you a good sense of the forces behind the destiny of different cultures on earth: why some have developed into powerful colonialist nations, and others never even developed agriculture. Jared Diamond is very thorough and convincing, although by three-quarters through you pretty much get the point and it kinda feels like he's bashing you over the heahead with his argument, but it's still kinda fun.

What didn’t you like about Doug Ordunio’s performance?

I felt like at times the reader didn't fully understand what he was reading. Occasionally the cadence of a sentence will sit in a weird spot and you kinda have to repeat it to yourself to fully understand what the author meant. This makes the engaging and otherwise fully accessible text a little hard to digest.

Absolutely Eye Opening!

This book delivers an extremely rare and satisfying feeling, that of having something you've always been aware of but never realized brought out of your blindspot and onto center-stage. Racism is a sensitive topic in today's political climate, yet this book was able to pluck all the uncomfortable questions I had and lay them bare before me with a humbling obviousness. Whatever residual inclinations of racism I had were absolutely annihilated by this book.

Here's an uncomfortable question: why did Australian Aboriginals never progress past hunter-gatherers, but when Europeans landed in Australia they quickly established farms, ranches, towns, and cities? The answer is obvious, really. The Europeans accomplished this by planting European crops and bringing European farm animals. In the hundreds of years since arriving, Europeans never built yam plantations or domesticated the kangaroo - the truth is that Europeans have done no better of a job of surviving in Australia *with Australian resources* as the Aboriginals.

This book isn't just fascinating, it's life-changing.

The right kind of audiobook

Audiobooks are usually consumed while doing other things --- driving, jogging, cooking. For the most part these are mindless tasks so it works, but occasionally the brain is required or ambient sound intrudes, and you miss something. For me this disqualifies as audiobooks most fiction and all dense non-fiction. A good audiobook should be full of interesting but simple ideas, and not have too many names or numbers to keep straight. Some repetitiveness than would grate in print is welcome. In these respects this book is ideal. It takes the theory of geographical determinism and the factors of east-west axis, domesticable animals and plants and provides a non-racist, non-cultural reason for why Europe conquered the world. Anyone with any amount of curiosity about how the balance of world power ended up the way it did would find this idea interesting. Highly recommended.

Really wanted to enjoy this

I’ve been interested in this book for a while and finally found the opportunity to listen. Though the information is good, the narrator’s delivery sounds like the teacher from Ferris Bueller‘s Day off calling role. The book is not written with a great deal of dynamism, and so the narration combined allows the mind to wander.