Guns, Germs, and Steel: Uncovering the Factors That Shaped Human Societies

EDGKBH: An excellent read - good content and a relaxed writing style

Germany on Aug 09, 2023

alwinalwin: The media could not be loaded.  It will change our life views totally.
Only fault is about the font of the print , it is relatively small...but it can be read somewhat ...
Must read for a History lover....

India on Aug 05, 2023

V.Pezzoli: Diamond commence son livre par une anecdote, un jour qu'il se promenait dans je ne sais quelle forêt tropicale avec son pote Yali de je ne sais quelle tribu (je sais aucun respect mais j'ai lu le livre y'a un assez bout de temps), Yali lui pose une question : "pourquoi c'est les blancs qu'ont colonisé les autres peuples et non pas l'inverse ?" qu'il lui dit. Alors là le Gérard il se gratte la tête, déjà parce que y'a plein de mouches (enfin j'imagine) et puis parce qu'il se met à réfléchir : "bah tiens c'est pas co* ça comme question, ça ferait un bon bouquin en plus, p'têtre même un documentaire, un Pulitzer d'enfer."
Et le voilà parti le Gégé, le Jaja en américain, vous savez c'est un bon gars, lui en faut peu. A vrai dire des tas d'guss se la sont posée avant lui cette question, mais lui il est biologiste alors ça change tout.
Le tonton Marx avait déjà essayé, le tonton Weber aussi, et puis deux trois mecs un peu raciste sur les bords. Bon allez j'arrête mes enfantillages.

Un peu de sérieux. Ces dernières années, avec la mondialisation sur toutes les bouches, des nouveaux travaux on vu le jour, ce qu'on appelle communément la "global...

France on Mar 04, 2021

JohnT: I recommend this book.

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...

United Kingdom on Feb 12, 2016

Felipe C. S. Moitta: This is the best book on history, anthropology and general understanding of humans past I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. Jared shows how to scientifically approach simple questions, which are the deepest ones to answer. Why have Europeans sailed to Americas and Africa and not otherwise? Why were they in possession of horse, guns and germs? To find the right question is a talent in on itself, and Jared proves himself to be a master at it, an goes on to answer each and every question as fully as possible. In a very neatly organized way, carrying so many scientific discoveries on so many different fields that the book is certainly one of a kind. His serene view of thing, his class in reasoning, showing what is commonly thought on the subject and why, and when his views differ, again why and who claims otherwise. The depth of his inquiry. And amazing and must read book for anyone who wishes to understand more of how is it that the world ended up the way it is.

“In short, plant and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser human populations. The resulting food surpluses, and (in some areas) the animal-based means of transporting those surpluses,...

Brazil on Oct 01, 2015

gloine36: Two decades ago when I served in the Missouri National Guard we had an extended drill weekend at Ft. Leonard Wood for a live fire artillery exercise. This was a three day drill and I remember it clearly because it was the same weekend as Princess Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997. I had been at the local library the day before we rolled out and saw an interesting book that promised to explain why western civilization had been the one to colonize the New World and rise to ascendency over much of the world for a long period of time. That had always been an interesting question for me and one which many people do not know the answer to. I checked out the book and during some downtime I began to read. To say that the book grabbed my attention is an understatement. I started it on Friday and finished it on Saturday. My whole conception of how history had seen the rise of Western Civilization was fundamentally altered and would never be the same.

At the time I thought that using Guns, Germs, and Steel as an educational tool would be a great idea. My dream of teaching history had never been realized and in 1997 seemed like it would never happen. However, history is full of...

United States on Sep 05, 2015

Tom Riddle: Guns, Germs, And Steel is an influential treatise of competitive plausibility regarding the challenging question why population groups on different continents experienced widely divergent paths of development. Contrary to the voluminous objections cited in the many of the revisionist historians and anthropologists, the famous biologist Jared Diamond tackles the most important question of global history in one compelling volume: "Why did Europeans come to dominate the New World?" This question has been answered by others before and Diamond's idea that Europe's geography is the cause geographical determinism has also been proposed before. Any student of history or anthropology can drag up a case or two of this thesis. Baron Montaigne, for example, suggested that Europe's predominance curtailed from its superior government, which could be derived directly from the coolness of its climate. However as an enthusiastic proponent of environmental determinism, Jared Diamond presents a set of premises consistent with evidence provided from a wide range of disciplines, but he does not attempt to answer the question of genetic diversity, including segregated intelligence among racial groups...

United States on Apr 14, 2011