Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs and Steel

Notify me when the book’s added
To read this book, upload an EPUB or FB2 file to Bookmate. How do I upload a book?
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.

Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA Medical School, is the author of The Third Chimpanzee, awarded the 1992 Los Angeles Times Science Book Award. He is a regular contributor to Natural History and Discover magazines and lives in Los Angeles.
This book is currently unavailable
669 printed pages
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
👍👎

Impressions

  • Miguel Isadashared an impression4 years ago
    👍Worth reading

  • yobokiesshared an impression4 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    💡Learnt A Lot

Quotes

  • rafaelshas quoted6 years ago
    History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves."
  • Mon S.has quoted8 years ago
    In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.
  • Mon S.has quoted8 years ago
    aardvarks

On the bookshelves

fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)