Have you ever heard of "the Galileo Defense?" The phrase describes the phenomenon of honest, accurate science attempting to defend itself against ideology-driven accusations of those who are opposed to the implications of the scientist's work. A good example would be Darwin as he faced charges of atheism, satanism, etc. If the Galileo Defense has an opposite, it would certainly apply to this book. To save you the trouble, Guns, Germs, and Steel basically articulates the first moderately believable and (most importantly) politically correct attempt to explain why the West was able to enjoy a position of relative dominance during the past few hundred years. Unfortunately, his assertions rely on numerous glaring omissions and flawed assumptions that really undermine his credibility. The existence of peanuts is one notable example that will be easily understood by those who've read the book. Those who haven't should do themselves a favor and skip ahead to L. Ron Hubbard.

I found that Guns, Germs, & Steel filled in a lot of missing pieces but the best thing was it gives a fresh outlook on why we have so many equalities among races. Until we find hard evidence we will continue to believe some of the old racist notions of genetic determinacy.
Rahasya Poe, Lotus Guide Magazine [...]

I can't add much to the good reviews, but I wanted to suggest that if your child is taking history in school or shows an interest before that, please buy them this book.

This action will reflect the main premise of this theory, it will create the environment for growth.

Mr. Diamond must be admired for this epic work on humanity. Is it perfect, of course not, but what is perfect. He gives us a different way to view history and how geography has influnced it. I enjoyed the read and have assigned it to my students for reading and reviewing. The majority of them said it was worth the effort and it has given some instances of lively discussion in the classroom. We should tip our hats to a man who at least gives us something to think about.

G, G, & S is pretentious but shallow and illustrates the corruption of too much of American academia where political correctness masquerades as objective scholarship. It is as false as Lysenko's "biology." Diamond sets up a strawman, "biological differences," and destroys him with his academic beanbags of dubious validity.

I won't recount all of this unfortunate book's deficiencies, as many reviewers have already done so in voluminous detail. It is a strained and selective exposition of history in a vain attempt to support the author's preconceived opinions, i.e., that geography determines everything, which even casual observers would conclude is nonsense. It completely ignores the roles of human creativity, innovation, energy, drive, and motivation. To Diamond everything is predestined by geography. This sounds vaguely religious, i.e., politically correct.

To Diamond, physics, engineering, and mathematics would have been developed in New Guinea, if not for what? Who knows?

An alternative exposition on roughly the same topic is, "Carnage and Culture," by Victor D. Hanson. It displays vastly superior, i.e., objective scholarship.

Diamond's final analysis proves a good point. Many dominant countries today are not only in Europe and East Asia, but are also ones that have been largely repopulated by the descendants of those peoples, like the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Taiwan, and Singapore. Other countries rising to power today, like Southeast Asia's "Little Tiger" economies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines), also contain descendants of invading conquerors nearly 10,000 years ago. China and India are now back in power to their historical positions. The Eurasian continent is the only one with a advanced history since the beginning of the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution. Look at South America, and you'll find that the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) are ones with mostly European-descended populations like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, and the poorest ones are the ones with the largest indigenous, native populations like Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. Diamond is so right in this regard.

Pulling together research from a wide variety of fields, Diamond sets out to answer the question of why civilization as we know it developed and flourished in some parts of the world, while other areas were left behind.

The gist: it's all about the geography. In order for civilization to develop, people have to be living in large groups, with food plentiful enough so that some people can be spared from the business of survival to specialize in organization and crafts. In order for that to happen, they must have agriculture and livestock. In order to have agriculture and livestock, they must have either native animals that are domesticable or trading opportunities to obtain them. In other words, it all comes down to where they started from.

I admit to a little hesitation before I chose this book. I read through several reviews, and quite a few reviewers claimed it promoted the concept of racial superiority, and I really didn't want to end up reading several hundred pages of racist propaganda. Still, the majority of the reviews were positive, and there were also quite a few negative reviews complaining that it overlooked the racial factors, so I was intrigued enough by the question to give it a try.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is decidedly not racist propaganda. Diamond bends over backward to ensure that it's not, and even raises the very intriguing question of who's actually smarter--the westerner with the comfortable lifestyle or the jungle native who has to depend on his own knowledge and judgment for survival.

What I enjoyed most about the book was how thorough it was, putting together... well, I was going to say all the pieces of the puzzle, but when it comes to human history, that's just not possible--but enough of the puzzle to see the big picture, rather than just the small segments you get by focusing on a single discipline. It's not enough to describe, for example, how the development of language affected civilization--it's put into perspective along with all the other developments happening at the same time.

A lot of reviewers have gone into detail about author Jared Diamond's arguments in Guns, Germs and Steel, so I won't repeat them. Essentially, he says that geography was a major factor, although not the only factor, in determining why some societies are more advanced than others. He also says that cultural and individual factors played a role in the success or failure of individual societies.

Overall, GGS is easy to read and understand. It can get a little boring and does go into too much detail on occasions but mostly it is an engrossing book. Diamond starts many of the chapters with a set of questions, gives some background, and then answers those questions. Even if you're not very knowledgeable when it comes to this subject area the format makes it for the most part understandable.

Some negative reviewers complain that Diamond is anti-European/anti-white and is simply making excuses for less successful societies. But this isn't true. It is not just Europeans who have conquered and displaced others peoples. Diamond goes into a lot of detail about Bantu farmers transplanting other groups in Africa and Chinese domination of Asia.

What Diamond does do is put to rest the idea of genetic superiority. He goes into detail about various groups, such as Polynesians, that were separated into different environments. He explains how those groups, even though the same genetically, fared very differently based on the environments of the islands they settled.

He also explains that even though some peoples are primitive by our standards they are not unintelligent, which is something many people in advanced societies believe. However, Diamond does support the idea of cultural superiority to some extent. He says that conservative cultures that are not open to innovation either gets transplanted or taken over by those that are open to innovation.

This book is really a macro look at the development of human societies. For example, the book's goal is not to explain why European peoples (including Americans) currently dominate the world instead of the Chinese (although some reasons are given). Rather, the goal is to explain why Eurasians had the potential to dominate but peoples like Native Americans and Australian Aborigines didn't.

..it wouldn't be "one damn fact after the other," a comment on the study of history that Diamond references. His historical book is the antithesis of the "big man" version of history, so-and-so meets X, and says this and that, and decides Y. His is a study of history in its broadest swaths, examining the proximate reasons for a given outcome, but always striving to ground his work in the ultimate causations.

One of the numerous strengths of this book is Diamond's multidisciplinary command of the increasingly fragmented fields of human knowledge. He can readily draw on linguistic theories, archeology, paleontology, literature, agriculture, etc. I found his brief explanation of Carbon-14 dating lucid, with the important emphasis on the recently discovered variability in this isotope in the earth's atmosphere over the last 50,000 years. He draws on his long anthropological experience in New Guinea to buttress his central premises, and I personally found his account of the human expansion into South East Asia, Australia and Polynesia most illuminating. Another high point was his description of the Spanish defeat of the Incas at Cajamarca in 1532.

He provides very plausible answers to seemingly difficult questions as to how 168 Spaniards could defeat 80,000 Incas, as well as the central question of the book, "Yali's question," why the "whites" had most of the "cargo," and the New Guineans so little. His thesis is that the environment and geography are the paramount determinants, and it was where particular mammals could be domesticated, and certain grains could be cultivated that determined where "civilizations" would eventually arise. With a class of individuals not devoted to acquiring food full-time, they had the time to develop technological improvements to the human condition. In addition, an incidental condition occurred due to man's proximity to domesticated animals - diseases, which certain individuals developed immunity to, and which decimated populations not previously exposed, as in the Americas. He does not totally dismiss that quirky "human factor" of a few great and not so great men, and specifically speculates how the world might have been different if Hitler had been killed in the 1944 assassination attempt, or even earlier, in a 1930 car accident.

Aside from the numerous thought-provoking aspects of the book itself, I found myself reading many of the 93 1-star reviews of this book posted at Amazon (out of at 1048 as of this writing). How could this many people strongly dislike the book? (By way of comparison, another best seller, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" has only 3 1-star reviews out of 216). Many simply denounced the book for being "politically correct," meaning that he provided a non-racist answer for why some societies are more technologically advanced than others (but not necessarily happier!). Others fell asleep (!) reading this enthralling account of humankind's development, but I really could find no one who indicated factual errors (some were claimed, but I wondered if they had actually read the book, because they made assertions that Diamond did not.) I too looked for assertions I would contest, and felt his statement that the wheel would not have helped the people of Mesoamerica without domesticated animals to be incorrect (for anyone who has ever used a wheel barrel), but later in the book, Diamond also raises this point.

Overall, a superlative book, and a start towards making the study of history a science.

Although this book does contain a decent number of interesting historical accounts, the interpretation as to the cause of this events is eerily similar to the Marxist view. That is, availability of resources, not ideas, drives history and shapes human civilization. Tragically, this is the essential thesis of this book and it is wrong.

Jared Diamond has written a comprehensive readable book describing some of the prominent reasons that societies have failed in the past and often succumbed to invaders. It seemed well written to me and although I thought the title a little pretensious, the subject matter is good.

The problem with attributing human social development to externalities is that it glosses over the essential differences between all societies- that is how labor is socially organized and who decides how to allocate and use the social surplus. While geography tempers social development, it is the method of social production that is the overwhelming determinant of social success. Slave societies out produce hunter-gatherers. Feudal out-produces slave, and wage labor out produces slavery and feudal systems.

What is more more instructive is how current social relations restrict and hamper social development by wasting social production on useless activities like military ventures and individualized social decision-making. e.g. Individuals riding in cars instead of individuals sharing mass transportation, a more socially efficient transportation system.

This is a must read for those who are interested in both history and the future of humankind!

The Aborigines of Australia built mankind's first known watercraft 40,000 plus years ago, yet today they are the most primitive stone age people of any continent. Why is that?

Did the mother of invention arise from people living in harsh tropical/desert climates forced to invent in order to survive? Or did it arise in colder climates more readily because people were trapped in their warm home with nothing else to do but experiment? Was it both?

Most critics of this book sound to me like they have only read the summary on the back of the book. Their arguments are preconceived.

Even if you are one of those critics, read it. Disagree with it afterwards if you still want to, regardless I think it will add new perspective to human history for you. If you decide you want to write your own book based on how genetics and anthropometry shaped human history, by all means do so. I'd gladly read that too.

But don't just shrug if off before hearing him out. That's selfish cynicism and counterproductive to scientific understanding.

It is remarkable and disappointing that Diamond's attempt to discover reasons for industrialization and technological development in certain cultures skirts the history of MONEY.

Ever wonder how the Europeans managed to conquor the Americas, and not the other way around? Well, if you're unfortunate enough to have that much time on your hands, there's now a book tailor-made for you! Jared Diamond details how some civilizations have come to conquor others, and not vice versa. Obviously, they do this by utilizing guns, germs, and steel (gee, wonder where he gets the title from?)...but the underlying question, of course, is HOW certain societies got those advances, and how others did not?

I'm not a professional historian, biologist, anthropologist, or what-have-you, so I can't state boldly that Diamond's evidence holds up. But his argument does have a certain logic about it. Not saying there aren't other factors that he should consider (environment can't be the only reason people do what they do), but he does present a convincing argument, at least to this layman (and the fact that we're still reading this book 10 years later suggests professionals have found it food for thought as well).

A note to casual readers, as many of you probably are. There are sections of this book that become a bit monotonous; the three chapters detailing the rise of food production in various world societies is a bit mind-numbing (blame our violence-soaked media), and there's a lot of information that gets tossed around here without thorough explanation. Never fear, though--this book is well-worth the read, and is largely entertaining. Diamond's prose would make for a good textbook (there are questions in the back accompanying this volume; not sure what class you could read this in, but I would reccommend it for anyone interesting in trying it); he places a bit too much emphasis upon New Guinea (where he has performed years of field research), but we can't blame him for writing about what he loves, can we? "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is an interesting, thought-provoking book about the rise and fall of society throughout the ages. Highly reccommended for anyone with even a passing interest on the subject.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in human history. The ideas in the book are innovative and thought provoking -- a look at human history that gives new perspective. Also very important is the suggestion in the Epilogue that a science of human history should be developed to study the issues raised in the book in more detail. A great idea.

The book is very well written -- well organized and easily understandable. The author uses many contractions that don't often appear in formal writing, but in the context of this book, that less formal style works.

The author incorporates many disciplines into the discussion -- anthropology, biology, history. The concept of available native food groups and available domesticable animals is well presented, with historical examples from all human civilizations. Whether you ultimately agree with the author's perspective (and I personally think he mostly got it right), the book raises so many interesting issues that it is required reading.

From a biology point of view, this book was fascinating. Jared Diamond explained plant and animal domestication and the movement of human populations in a very clear way. His exploration of how different societies developed at different rates was also very interesting in that he claims that this difference is based only on geography. This even involves the east-west and north-south axes of the continents and obstacles to communication. And I use the word claims intentionally. Although he makes a good case for his theory, he does not present any alternatives. Just because his theory seems logical, it does not mean that it is the only possible explanation; it might be one of several. Yet Diamond presented his thesis as a proven fact. Indeed, the only shortcoming of this book was that the author got preachy at times, which annoys me even if he is "preaching to the choir." In other words, even if I agree with the thesis, I don't like being beaten about the head with it. But if you don't mind the dogmatic tone, then this book is well worth the time.

Reading this book I wasn't able to buy into his arguments. Too many sweeping generalizations and too many factual errors in the text. For example, when talking about bananas he writes about early man selecting for smaller and smaller seeds until there weren't any more. Modern seedless bananas are that way because they are triploid and sterile. This is something that has happened fairly recently, probably within the last couple of hundred years. Sloppy terminology, factual errors and the sweeping generalizations ruined this book for me.

In 1532, in the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca, a decisive moment took place during the greatest collision in modern history. A ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, led by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, captured the Inca emperor Atahuallpa who was surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers in the heart of the Inca Empire. In "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond, uses this dramatic episode of human history to trace a chain of causation starting with a set of proximate factors and leading to ultimate causes explaining this outcome and that of many similar collisions between colonizers and native peoples. Steel swords and armor, guns, horses, maritime technology, and writing systems used by the Spaniards, as well as diseases that arrived with the Europeans, and resulted in a power struggle dividing the Inca Empire, are the proximate factors that Diamond lumps in the term "Guns, Germs, and Steel". He then goes into pursuit of the ultimate causes in the chain. He seeks the broad patterns of history that explain why the rise of complex human societies unfolded differently on different continents over the last 13,000 years, since the end of the last ice age known as the Pleistocene. After extensive research and analysis on world history, geography, botany, zoology, archeology, linguistics, anthropology, and other fields, he concludes that differences in continental environments, not in human biology, led to the rise of complex human societies.


The ultimate factor according to Diamond concerns the rise of food production. This is influenced by several environmental factors such as the availability of domestic-able plants and animals. It is not sufficient to have Mediterranean-like climates which are the most suitable for growing crops. Such climates exist in California, Southeastern Australia, and Southern Africa. A large selection of plants and animals that are suitable for domestication is essential. The author conducts a detailed study based on the literature. A case that stands out is that of wheat vs. corn. Wheat's nutritional and cultivation characteristics provided an advantage to Fertile Crescent societies in their transition to food producing from hunting-gathering status. The Americas on the other hand had to make do with corn which had a longer evolutionary path from its original wild variety to the one eventually used as food by humans. Moreover, it is less nutritious than wheat, and is lower yielding as a crop. The Americas, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa also suffered from a deficiency of animals that are good candidates for domestication. The Americas' lama is not as useful as a pack animal as is the horse of Eurasia. Africa's large mammals such as the zebra and the elephant had characteristics the author deals with in detail that prevented domestication by humans. Similarly, Australia lacked suitable plant and animal varieties to domesticate.


In addition to the availability of good starting plant and animal material, Diamond describes three other sets of environmental factors that affected the rise of food production throughout the world. A second set controlled the rate of diffusion within the continents and was mainly influenced by the orientation of the continent's axis. An East-West axis, such as in Eurasia, fostered easy movement and migration of plants and animals, as well as ideas and technology. A North-South axis as in the Americas and Africa provided obstacles to such diffusion due to the varying climates along longitudinal lines. The third set of factors affected the rate of diffusion between continents and was mainly caused by geographic isolation such as the case of Australia and the separation between the hemispheres. The fourth set of factors was the differences in area and population. Larger landmass and population density increases the number of potential innovators, the number of societies, and competition among them. Eurasia had the largest landmass and population. The Americas covered a large area but were fragmented by geography and ecology.


The four major sets of environmental differences among the continents thus resulted in significant variation in when societies transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers, and in whether that transition occurred at all. The onset of food production then starts a chain reaction, giving humans surplus food to increase their numbers and support specialists: soldiers, chiefs, scribes, and artisans. This in turn leads to developing technology including weapons and writing. Farming societies thus enjoy advantages in numbers, technology, and organization over hunter-gathering societies and are more likely to overcome them. Another by-product of farming societies are the germs caused by livestock that people in these societies develop immunity against.


Diamond subsequently goes around the world in five chapters for a tour of all the continents analyzing how environmental factors affected societal developments in them. He applies his reasoning and enforces it using evidence from the historic record, archeology, linguistics, and genetics. A striking example is that of Australia, New Guinea to its northeast, and Indonesia, an island group northwest of Australia. Diamond explains how geography, climate, availability of domestic-able plants and animals, degree of isolation from surrounding lands, among other factors contributed to the state of societal development in those three regions. The result was stone-age hunter gatherers in Australia, stone-age farmers in New Guinea, and iron-age farmers in Indonesia. In the chapter How Africa Became Black he describes the expansion of the black Bantu farmers from subequatorial West Africa into East and South Africa, engulfing the hunting gathering Pygmy and Khoisan peoples in the process. The case of Polynesia is a very telling natural experiment. The same people traveled by canoes starting from Asia and spread out widely into the south Pacific islands. Within a millennium, the Polynesian descendants reached highly varying states of development from a proto-state with intensive food production in Hawaii to hunting-gathering on the Chatham's. In the other continental chapters, Diamond delves into How China Became Chinese about the history of East Asia, and Hemispheres Colliding about the histories of Eurasia and the Americas.


Diamond asserts that the four major sets of environmental factors affecting the trajectories of human societies are undisputable quantifiable facts. For example, New Guinea is much smaller, has far fewer big animal species, and is more isolated than Eurasia. It seems obvious to conclude that the environment of those two places caused their differing levels of societal complexity. Yet such arguments invite strong criticisms of "geographic determinism" by historians. What troubles the critics is that human creativity is ostensibly discounted. Diamond points out that it is not. Human inventiveness still matters but it is dependent on the presence of favorable starting material and conditions to utilize its inventions.


In the Epilogue, Diamond further deals with other variables that tend to complicate the study of human history. For example, the factors involved in shorter time scales and smaller geographic scales that would help explain why it was people from Europe, not the Fertile Crescent or China, who colonized the new world. He also considers the case of cultural factors and individual influences that may act as wild cards making history unpredictable. But despite these variables he contends that it is the environmental factors that determine the broad pattern of history. As a case in point against the Great Man theory of the exceptional individual he reasons that although Alexander the Great probably changed the course of Western Eurasian states, he did not make Eurasia a place of literate, food-producing states with iron tools at a time Australia had only illiterate, hunter-gatherer tribes with non-metal tools. However to aid in the analysis of such problems with a large number of individual variables he suggests the study of human history as a science using scientific methodologies.


The question about the fates of human societies represents a very complex problem due to the number of individual variables involved but there is little doubt in this reader's mind that the environmental factors examined by Diamond are at the base of the broad historic pattern that set societies on different trajectories as he concludes. Diamond's thoughtful and thoroughly researched study of world history in the last 13,000 years leading to the modern world offers a convincing explanation full of examples and detailed research with extensive references. This is true even though at times some of his explanations do seem convenient or wishful thinking. However, acknowledging the causal effect of environment on human societies, the reader cannot help wondering about the second part of the author's thesis, that human biology is not a causal factor. This is potentially a minefield but wouldn't 13,000 years in separate and isolated environments result in biological differences due to evolving genetics? The resulting genetic differences would then become a causal factor though not the ultimate one. The author himself opines that New Guineans are on average smarter than Eurasians due to the need to survive in a harsh environment. In any case, the main gripe detractors have with the overall thesis is that it undermines the importance of human inventiveness. That seems to this reader as just another case of human arrogance, the belief that we are exceptional and have full control over our fates. Yes, it is part of the equation, but why would a human without a horse invent stirrups, or a plow with no large animal to pull it?


No matter what position one takes on its thesis, the book is worth reading for its wealth of information about the environmental condition of the continents. It is an enlightening, captivating, and highly readable book. This is definitely a must read for anyone interested in human history or seeking to understand the state of the modern world.

Not bad, but not real impressive. There is some real good work in there, but his "start" at 11K BC is a little silly. I've seen actually professional historians do the same kind of work with footnotes and all by simply starting a mere 500 years ago, Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Like many politically correct people, he indulges in reverse racism that seems to down "whitey", but actually ends up slapping down the "coloreds".

He gets the second star because at least he doesn't get into that "BCE" garbage.

Not bad, but not real impressive. There is some real good work in there, but his "start" at 11K BC is a little silly. I've seen actually professional historians do the same kind of work with footnotes and all by simply starting a mere 500 years ago, Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Like many politically correct people, he indulges in reverse racism that seems to down "whitey", but actually ends up slapping down the "coloreds".

He gets the second star because at least he doesn't get into that "BCE" garbage.

Prior to reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel," I had a very broad sense of knowledge in the history of man. I have been able to use the valuable lessons of this book, such as how food production was domesticated, and why certain societies prosper and other fail, to establish an economic forecast for our current trials and tribulations. Coming from a business background, I am now more affluent in rationalizing why certain economic conditions constrain one country while allowing another to prosper. I highly recommend this book without any hesitation to anyone interested in increasing their general knowledge of human societies.

I am half way the book, but it gives me an unexpected overview of the history of homo sapiens since the latets ice-time.
Why went things as they went? Why conquered 168 Spaniards the Inca empire and dit not 168 inca's appear at Madrid and conquered the Spanish empire. What was the infuence of germs that were coupled to the domesticated animals?
And how futile - not in the book but my opnion - are the excuses made by some modern western governments of a course of history that nobody designed? What determined that course? Read this book!

The idealists among us might wonder, if one civilization is so much more advanced than another, why couldn't that advanced civilization "live and let live?" Why did the Europeans have to basically embark on a policy of extermination of the indigenous people in America, why did they have to do the same thing in Australia, and so on. The author cites other instances, for instance, the Maori of Polynesia simply wiped out or enslaved another tribe, the Moriori, who must have been the "give-peace-a-chance" hippies of the 1830s. That sort of question appears to be out of scope for Diamond, and I feel he could have at least commented on it.

...

For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]

Brian Wright
Copyright 2008

I was a geography major in college and I cannot understand why this was not a required read. I have such a better understanding of global development. This really alters the way you think about advanced civilazations versus those who that not developed. It is not the most captivating book, but it is a brillant read. You will come away enlightened.

Had to buy this book for my European Economic History class. Liked it alot because it has a bit of a narrative and a lot of plausible theories rather than just stating the facts. My girlfriend (who has no interest in economics) had heard of it and started reading it when I was done and she liked it too!

There is a whole industry of books that explain why the world is the way it is. They are all by definition reductive and fail to grasp the actual complexities of the development of humanity. But, that being said, Guns Germs and Steel is among the best.

I can boil down Diamond's argument into a couple sentences: Why has the west been the dominate power for the last couple centuries? Because the West had access to (you guessed it) guns, germs and steel. Why did they have access to guns germs and steel before everyone else? Accidents of geography and evolution.

That's pretty much it. If all you care about is the thesis, I have just saved you hours of reading time. If you're interested in how he got there, or want to feel humbled (as I did) because your range of knowledge is no where near Diamond's, then read the book for its brilliant explanation for why things are the way they are. You don't have to agree with everything Diamond argues to enjoy this one. Even at five hundred pages, it is reductive with too much of a reliance on technology as the explanation for the way the world has turned out, but it is still a magnificent read and guide for how to develop and explain an argument.

Good stuff delivered what i've imagined. Expectation sailing date was on 10th JAN but, Actuall date what i received was on 20th JAN. Even I ordered by Expedited International Shipping. Which one i ordered December 28, 2007. It took almost one month. How can I couldn't disapointed.
But, I'm mansioning again I received good stiff.

This product is a great book. It is everything I expected it to be and more.

Jared Daimond's work on GG&S is anathema to conceptions of scholarship, truth or objectivity. Although his questions are very interesting and well worth asking, I find it incredulous that he could have spent 30 years forming preposterously overly simplistic, deterministic conclusions. It is obvious that the author's heart is in the right place, the way he cares for all the undeveloped Edison's in Papua New Guinea, however, the assertion is quite skewed and in all probability unwarrented. Mr. Diamond is so steeped in the post modern, politically correct, empirically driven, multicultural, lowest common denominator, deterministic paradigm of our modern thought, that his book is no more than fad driven by the predominant victim narratives of our age. It will not survive the lunacy of this epoch, but I give it equal odds to out last our own species if we don't find a way to extricate ourselves from this ever increasing quagmire of pseudo scientific dogma.

Jared Daimond's work on GG&S is anathema to conceptions of scholarship, truth or objectivity. Although his questions are very interesting and well worth asking, I find it incredulous that he could have spent 30 years forming preposterously overly simplistic, deterministic conclusions. It is obvious that the author's heart is in the right place, the way he cares for all the undeveloped Edison's in Papua New Guinea, although sweet and touching is quite skewed. However, he is so steeped in the post modern, politically correct, empirically driven, multicultural, lowest common denominator, deterministic paradigm of our modern thought, that his book is no more than fad driven by the predominant victim narratives of our age. It will not survive the lunacy of this epoch, but I give it equal odds to out last our own species if we don't find a way to extricate ourselves from this ever increasing quagmire of pseudo scientific dogma.

Diamond proposes that geography is the ultimate cause for explaining why societies developed at different rates across different countries. The idea is not new, but Diamond's book is probably the only book of its kind to cover it in detail while making it accessible to non-specialists and non-academics.

Although the book is far from perfect (and Diamond addresses many of its weaknesses throughout), the central thesis is supported extremely well and deserves a perfect rating. It is a very important book that should be read widely because it deals with a topic of immense importance. It has tremendous explanatory power about the world and acts as a formidable rebuttal to theories based primarily on inherent biological factors for explaining history.

Some quibbles:

1) The book is often repetitive. This may have been done to drill the point home, but it was not necessary

2) The idea that large mammals became extinct because they were not afraid of humans (because they evolved in isolation) in the New World, just seems absurd since there are many animals that evolve apart from humans but are nevertheless afraid of us. A combination of ice age and hunters without understanding of conversvation and preservation likely led to their extinction, and that's that. It may also be the foundation of such concepts of "respecting Mother Nature" that Natives learned as a result of their unwitting decimation of former game animals.

3) The role of human biology is ignored a priori in the book's hypothesis. Since we know that individuals have had tremendous effects on the course of history, biological factors also must serve as ultimate causes for the shaping of societies and history. I realize that this is a much less tractable factor than environmental causes, so it's understandable to focus only on the latter, but there can be no doubt about its significance.

The book deals with universal history using a new approach, and I think that Diamond does a very good job of dealing with the topic, making the book fun to read and providing food for the mind. Certainly, the books presents some important limitations as commented in other reviews: the deterministic bias, the lack of consideration about free human will in the study of human history (I am sorry, but explaining the extinction of dinosaurs cannot the same as finding the causes of the conquest of America by Europeans), the quick dismissal of facts that contradict his theory (his explanation about the difference between the history of Europe and China is, at best, poor, at worst, pathetic).
Overall, the book is worthy of being read. But I am afraid that 'Collapse', his following work, is probably a continuation of the same stuff. Do not count me in for reading 400 pages of the same story. One book was enough.

Another book I wish I hadn't waited so long to read. The thesis, well-known at this point, is that it is not inherent biological or "racial" differences that account for variations in success during certain points in history, but rather the geography and climate peoples started out in. The better the conditions, the earlier the development of food production, which then leads to a population growth and more "developed" government institutions and innovations such as writing and military technology. The darker part of the thesis is that early exposure to animals leads to both the evolution of hybridized animal-human diseases (chicken pox, the bubonic plague, smallpox, etc.) and immunity to them. As Diamond notes, this is the deadliest weapon "civilizations" have in their arsenal against peoples not as far along on the food production/complex government path, as shown by the conquests of both the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia.

Although Diamond is careful not to pass judgment or pull at heartstrings (which may be warranted in many instances), he does note that the pivotal moment in the long race for development was the extinction of many of the large mammals in Australia and the Americas. Had those animals survived and been domesticatable, the fate of the Americas in particular might have gone the other way. However, Eurasia was the continent with the most geogrpahic advantages, the most significant being the east-west axis, which goes hand in hand with similar latitudes throughout the continent. Similar latitudes, in turn, make it easier to pass crops from one end of the continent to another. That Africa and the Americas are dominated by a north-south latitude means that it is difficult to pass crops froms one end of the continents to the other.

Towards the end, Diamond is careful to point out that while geography gives a head start, it is not a guarantee, and political considerations must be taken into account when trying to determine which country- or even business- will win. Throughout the book, Diamond mentions in several places that although the Americas and other regions hadn't achieved certain milestones by the time they met with the Eurasians, that didn't mean that they weren't going to if left alone. He also notes that in the indigenous cultures he's worked closely with, he's met some brilliant inventors.

I thought the thesis was inherently not racist, and I'm not getting- at all- some reviewers complaints about that. In fact, at the beginning, Diamond points out reasons why the average member of the indigenous population of New Guinea is arguably more inherently intelligent than the average member of a given Western civilization: because New Guineans have a longer history of hunter-gathering, the primary killer among them is murder. Evading such a death requires more intelligence than evading death by infectious disease, which is more likely to fell a Westerner. Also, because hunting and gathering for food requires more skill and knowledge than going to a supermarket for food, survival doubly demands intelligence. Finally, most New Guineans lack the distractions Americans, Europeans and many upwardly mobile Asian countries have (television, internet, etc.) which have been shown to impede intellectual development, particularly in young children. Diamond makes that point not to prove the intellectual superiority of a certain country or "race", but to show that ultimately, it doesn't matter; no one would argue that the New Guinean legacy has been more successful through the world than the Eurasian.

I thought this was one of the most thought provoking books I've ever read and I can't wait to read more from Diamond. I also thought this was written clearly enough for most people to understand and even enjoy- I found myself laughing at a few parts, although my humor may admittedly be a little bit drier than others. Regardless, this was an engrossing read that helps reframe thoughts on "progress" and "civilization."

I bought a new hard cover edition for my husband as a Christmas gift and the first pages of the book were torn. I was extremely disappointed as this was a gift, and was supposed to be brand new.

Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
Perhaps one of the most important books I've read, Diamond asks the question: Why did some human cultures innovate and prosper, and end up colonizing the rest? Why did other cultures not develop past stone tools? Gives a scientific answer not based on race. Diamond is one smart fellow. A mature scientist. He uses everything he knows in this book. Guns, Germs & Steel is a Pulitzer Prize winner, winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, and a National Bestseller. Acclaimed by The New Yorker, New York Times, almost everyone else, major professors and-- Bill Gates. A must read for any thoughtful person. Great book club selection.

This book was actually the text book for a world history paper i took at university. I enjoyed the book (and the course) immensely. I've seen that Jared Diamonds arguments have not found favour with all the reviewers and perhaps I'll have to give the book a second look. My first impression was that Diamond adequately explains differences between the wealth of peoples across the world, applying research from many academic disciplines to reinforce his theories. I felt that Diamond produced a theory that successfully dismisses racist ideas on the differences between people. An accessible and enjoyable read, with conclusions i believe should not be dismissed easily. Perhaps critics of his work have ideological as opposed to scientific disagreements with his work. If this book were more widely read, I think it could do the world a great deal of good.

It is hard to understand why this book won the pulitzer (though another reviewer points it out: only journalists give the awards -- not scientists, historians and others in relevant fields who could have pointed out flaws).

Readers would benefit from reading J.M.Blaut's criticisms of this book, in his Eight Eurocentric Historians. Also any other author that can discredit this eurocentric nonsense (though they likely won't get awards from the "establishement" I bet!)

4.5 stars

This is a very thought-provoking work. If the plot summary seems even remotely interesting to you, read the book. Diamond is a fine writer and a sharp, humble thinker. There are many aha!-type passages here that will make you reconsider some of our basic cultural notions.
I had an interview already set up with Diamond for 9/12/01, and the previous day's events made for one of the most fascinating conversations I had with the many dozens of authors etc I interviewed in that period. Diamond isn't married to all of his hypotheses, and he can defend each one intelligently while making you rethink what you believe about life on this planet...and be wryly funny at the same time!
That's no mean feat.
Plus, a lot of this book just plain makes sense.

I loved this book. I have read it at least three or four times, and each time I discover something new that I missed the first time. Diamond's way of making the people in history come alive made me love history in a way I haven't since my undergrad years. Whatever those boring lectures in college killed, this book resurrected. His thesis is very well supported, and I enjoyed checking out some of the books in his endnotes.

Good piece of work. Inspires thought and conversation. Authoritative? No. Possible, yes. Researched extensively. Good fodder for late night dinner discussions.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is a decent book, and Diamond makes arguments based primarily on the geographic outlay of the world and relates that to how and why certain civilizations thrived and developed faster than others. This is an interesting concept, and one that I had never thought about before. Beyond that though, the book gets a bit slow.

I would recommend reading Diamond's "Collapse" in lieu of "Guns, Germs, and Steel". I found "Collapse" to be much more interesting as Diamond explores the reasons civilizations have failed. Often these reasons are related to said civilizations destroying their environments and devouring all of their resources to the point of the civilization's extintion. These were sophisticated and arguably advanced civilizations which still destroyed themselves. Very relevent to today's world.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" = How did we get here?
"Collapse" = Where are we headed?

The first question is interesting. The second question is essential to survival.

2005 Vintage reprint of 1st edition (1997), 480 pages.

This is another of the twenty books Charlie Munger recommends in the second edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack (the most useful book I have read) along with Diamond's first book, The Third Chimpanzee.

The Third Chimpanzee is the story of how humans became 'different' to other animals and what the future might hold for us, as evidenced by our recent past. It contains a section on why some peoples and societies came to dominate others. Guns, Germs and Steel is that section made into a book.

I found this detracted from my interest somewhat, as I was already aware of Diamond's broad conclusions and why he had reached them before starting the book (conversely, I found that section of The Third Chimpanzee very interesting). I have no regrets, though. Reading the books in the order they were published allows us to understand Diamond's thoughts and research better, as we get to follow his progress.

I talked in my earlier review of The Third Chimpanzee about the dangers of man-with-a-hammer syndrome (those who focus only on a narrow discipline are likely to interpret all findings through a single, distorted lens - just as a man equipped only with a hammer tends to see everything as a nail). Jared Diamond is an exemplar of the opposite: he started off in medical research, then pursued a parallel second career in bird ecology, evolution and biogeography and is (or was) learning his twelfth language. I greatly admire the way he synthesizes huge amounts of data across several disciplines to arrive at his striking conclusions.

Guns, Germs and Steel - as with another book on Munger's list of twenty recommended books, Garrett Hardin's Living Within Limits - is both a terrific book on its specific subject but also provides a superb broader example of how to think critically.

A couple of examples might help to illustrate what I mean. The first is a theme of both of Diamond's first two books: searching always for the ultimate rather than the proximate explanation. Eurasian technology, germs and societal structure were key factors that allowed Eurasian societies to dominate the others. However, Diamond asserts that underlying these proximate factors were the ultimate factors of the plant and animal species available for domestication and the general geography.

The availability of far better plant and animal species allowed farming and animal husbandry to take hold much earlier in Eurasia. This allowed much higher population densities - both of humans and their domesticated animals. This in turn led to a larger incidence of powerful human epidemic diseases - which in a number of cases originated from the domesticated animals. The more efficient food production and higher population densities in their turn allowed for specialisation, as societal classes could exist whose practitioners did not have to provide their own food (including professional soldiers).

Thus, the ultimate factors determine the existence of the proximate factors. Most people never see beyond the proximate factors - which appear to explain the outcomes, but in fact do not. This is an extremely important lesson.

Charlie Munger's mental models, for example, can be best viewed as an attempt to distil the way the world works to the simplest underlying (ultimate) reasons. This approach carries two massive benefits: if ultimate explanations exist we cannot understand how the world works (become 'wise') without knowing what they are (or even knowing that we should be searching for them). And secondly, it is much easier to remember and make use of fewer, simpler underlying factors.

Once you begin looking for ultimate factors, you begin to see them everywhere. The search for underlying reasons is usually explicit (or at least implicit) in all of the really good books. Karen Pryor shows this clearly in `Don't Shoot the Dog' (one of my favourite books that I have just re-read):

"These principles [of training with reinforcement] are laws, like the laws of physics. They underlie all learning-teaching situations as surely as the law of gravity underlies the falling of an apple. Whenever we attempt to change behaviour, in ourselves or others, we are using these laws, whether we know it or not."

The second excellent example of an approach to problem solving from Diamond is one of Charlie Munger's favourites. Diamond calls it the Anna Karenina principle, after the first sentence in Tolstoy's novel:

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Diamond explains what Tolstoy means: in order for a marriage to be a success, it must succeed in many different respects. The failure of any one of, for example, sexual attraction, agreement about money, child discipline or religion can doom a marriage - no matter how positive all the other factors.

Diamond then uses this principle to show us why so few animals have been successfully domesticated (because every one of at least six significant factors must be present for a species to be a suitable candidate for human domestication):

"This principle can be extended to understanding much else about life besides marriage. We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure."

This principle underlies the reasoning behind the Harvard School Commencement speech Charlie Munger gave in 1986 (included in Poor Charlie's Almanack). In it Munger inverts the problem of achieving a good and successful life by telling his audience how to virtually guarantee a miserable and unsuccessful life. By avoiding the key causes of failure, one is likely to end up with success by default: sometimes difficult problems are best solved (or even can only be solved) backwards.

As Sertillanges says: "What is knowledge, but the slow and gradual cure of our blindness?" I am grateful to Diamond (and Munger, who pointed me towards him) for helping me to see a little better.

Jared Diamond's work gets to the heart of the question: how did Europeans come to colonize most of the modern world when the Africans and Chinese had such a long head start in human history? The interesting answer is notGuns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, but rather how Europeans came to acquire those advantages much more quickly and efficiently than other societies (Native Americans, Africans, etc.) The four-part answer begins with the advantages of a dominant East-West axis (which Eurasia has) versus a dominant North-South axis (which Africa and the Americas lack). This East-West axis leads to greater success in food production, a sedantary lifestyle geared towards creating and accepting new technologies and diffusion of useful inventions, thereby giving the ability to outnumber and outfight societies who lack this natural geographic advantage. Diamond is an anthropologist who spent over 30 years studying the myriad ethnic groups of Papua New Guinea. A modern-day historian could never have written so broad a work. Diamond does not hesitate in going back tens of thousands of years continent-by-continent explaining what was and how it came to be. He makes good use of the 400 pages and is dead on most of the analysis.

Alas, Diamond's greatest strength is also one of the book's weaknesses. There is a tendency to go in extreme detail in cases where this is unnecessary to make his point. There are many more pages on the various language families (and subfamilies, and sub-subfamilies) of various regions of the world than what is required. While this might be extremely appropriate for a scholarly journal, Guns, Germs and Steel is clearly intended for a mass-market audience. Occasional pacing aside issues aside, Diamond's work is surely a must-read for those grand historical debates that come up frequently politically-oriented social circles.

The updated 2005 edition includes an epilogue chapter detailing the role of Japan in Guns, Germs and Steel. This was left out in the earliest editions.

Jared Diamond's work gets to the heart of the question: how did Europeans come to colonize most of the modern world when the Africans and Asians has such a long head start in human history? The interesting answer is notGuns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, but rather how Europeans came to acquire those advantages much more quickly and efficiently than other societies (Native Americans, Africans, etc.) The four-part answer begins with the advantages of a dominant East-West axis (which Eurasia has) versus a dominant North-South axis (which Africa and the Americas lack). This East-West axis leads to greater success in food production, diffusion of useful inventions and the ability to outnumber and outfight societies who lack this natural geographic advantage. Diamond is an anthropologist who spent over 30 years studying the myriad ethnic groups of Paupa New Guinea. A historian could never have written so broad a work. Diamond does not hesitate in going back tens of thousands of years continent-by-continent. He makes good use of the 400 pages and I believe he is dead on most of the time.

Alas, Diamond's greatest strength is also one of the book's weaknesses. There is a tendency to go in extreme detail in cases where this is unnecessary to make his point. There are many more pages on the various language families (and subfamilies, and sub-subfamilies) of various regions of the world. While this might be extremely appropriate for a scholarly journal, Guns, Germs and Steel is clearly intended for a mass-market audience. Pacing aside, Diamond's work is surely a must-read for those grand historical debates that come up frequently politically-oriented social circles.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an encompassing encounter of human history that explores the reason as to why some human societies thrived and gained technology while others didn't.
Author Jared Diamond focuses more on domestication of plants and animals, coupled with the diseases prone to certain cultures and geographic locations. While really breaking no new ground, he at least brings ideas already known into new light to give us food for thought. Why didn't the wheel develop in the Americas as opposed to Asia and Europe? Well, they did not have a horse, or anything equal to it to haul a wheel.
Those were the kind of ideas that finally got me to see the relation between animal domestication and technological development.
He also analyzes the different diseases and why the Europeans had stronger immunities than the Americans. At the outset, he relates it to the different geographic environments. Europe and Eurasia have quite a different climate as opposed to the Americas.
However, he also ignores other factors that play into technological and viral developments. Blatantly omitted was the step backwards taken by Europe during Medieval Times.
He also forgets one reason for the European immunities was waste disposal. Europeans, being constrained by space, often located their refuse heaps too close to their major cities whereas Native Americans had some distance from those refuse areas. Also, Europe's smaller continent size had more people closer together to spread diseases. Also, during times of lose sexual morals led to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Europe.
My final critique of Diamond's treatise is that is becomes very repititive, mostly in the different plant domestications of different cultures. What he says in 431 pages could have been said in 350.
Still, despite all that, a reader will come away realizing why China, Africa, the Americas and Asia developed why they did, and connect old ideas that relate to each other.

Aside from all the logical, scientific and historical convolutions, which have been exhaustively noted by other reviewers, little is said about Diamond's writing style. He has a terrible command of the English language; he is repetitive and academically dishonest and inauthentic. I cannot really determine the reason this book made all the fuss that it did. What's worse is that this book gives people a sense that they learned something or that Diamond proved something when all he has done is poorly synthesized others' works without citing them, or made things up in a heap of dreadful language. Do not waste your time.

The book consolidated some not-so-new ideas and presented in an entertaining and refreshing style. It is disappointing that it lacks proper attributions in many places. The book also gets a bit repetitive and boring after a while. The key ideas should be able to be delivered in half of the current length.