Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $27.95
Your Save: $ 2.00 ( 7% )
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4
EAN: 9780393038910
ISBN: 0393038912
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 1997-03
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: No Book is More Important
Comment: With over 1,000 reviews on Amazon it is quite unlikely you will read anything different in my review than all the other five star reviews. I must say that Jared Diamond has written an extraordinary book. The question he tackles with GGS is, "Why and how did wealth and power develop in some areas and not in others."
Diamond concludes that wealth and power can be contributed to several factors: an East/West axis, domesticable plants and animals, this results in food surpluses and thus sedentary lifestyles which allow for specialization. Also, the domesticated large animals transfer diseases to a population, but due the sheer size of the population over time they will be able to develop immunity. Specialization then produces technology, writing, and political organization. In all this is why Eurasia was the region to conquer the Americas, Australia, etc.
It takes no prior knowledge to understand anything in this book. Diamond informs the reader on everything he/she will need to know to understand GGS. As my title states, no book is more important than this one to understand how and why different countries developed guns, germs, and steel and other countries did not.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Evil white men make the world a better place for everyone
Comment: This poor pampered professor while struggling at his work strolling along a beach in New Guinea is posed the question as to why Eurasian cultures have succeeded with technological developments but others haven't. IN over 300 pages he struggles to present an answer that could be presented in one sentence.
Its their BRAINS - they are wired differently
This is not racist. Its clear there are many physiological differences amongst various races. Eurasians for whatever reason are compelled to invent technology. One could certainly argue that Africans have a superior rhythm center in their brain.
The fact of the matter is the laws of physics are not relative. They work the same for everyone - nothing is stopping a non Eurasian from inventing something new based upon the fundamental and consistent laws of physics.
Like most professors he is woefully out of touch with the common person. All he need to is spend an hour in a gear head shop to understand the driving force in the Eurasian mind to tinker with technology. Of course then you cant sell a book - I returned mine immediately and asked for a refund - RUBBISH
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but repetitive
Comment: I won't give a synopsis of the book as there are plenty of other good reviews that cover that. I'll just say I found this book to have a fascinating and compelling argument for why history has gone the way it has. I did not find it to be racist or even biased as the author goes to great lengths to explain his every viewpoint and provides plenty of valid reasons against any kind of bias.
The biggest flaw of the book, in my mind at least, is that it is terribly repetitive. Diamond repeats the same points and conclusions many times. It gets to the point where you feel that entire pages could have been cut out and the book would have lost nothing. Aside from that however, it is an entertaining and informative read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: European Advantages
Comment: Professor Diamond takes up a very difficult question that spans centuries. He sets out to figure out why the Europeans were able to succeed not only in their enviornment, but control throughout the world.
Geography is something Diamond finds as a major factor. Geographic luck was able to determine that type of crops, and the conditions.
Diamond concludes that once the societies discovered how to produce enough food for themselves, then some of the other citizens were able to use their free time to advance other areas. This created specialists which resulted in the innovations of Guns and Steel. The germ advantage was because the Europeans lived with pigs.
Domestic animals (Diamond finds 14 thorughout history) most of them centered in Europe gave the major advantage against disease.
Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is an outstanding and interesting book to read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Why some societies advance faster than others.
Comment: It comes down to farming. Whoever farms first wins. Whichever society can not have to worry about what they are going to eat every day has the time to devote to innovation. The author's theory on a society's proximity to the equator does have some merit. I would have liked to have seen more discussion on how a society can hold itself back, such as Chinese rulers who burned their ships and stopped trade.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: No Book is More Important
Comment: With over 1,000 reviews on Amazon it is quite unlikely you will read anything different in my review than all the other five star reviews. I must say that Jared Diamond has written an extraordinary book. The question he tackles with GGS is, "Why and how did wealth and power develop in some areas and not in others."
Diamond concludes that wealth and power can be contributed to several factors: an East/West axis, domesticable plants and animals, this results in food surpluses and thus sedentary lifestyles which allow for specialization. Also, the domesticated large animals transfer diseases to a population, but due the sheer size of the population over time they will be able to develop immunity. Specialization then produces technology, writing, and political organization. In all this is why Eurasia was the region to conquer the Americas, Australia, etc.
It takes no prior knowledge to understand anything in this book. Diamond informs the reader on everything he/she will need to know to understand GGS. As my title states, no book is more important than this one to understand how and why different countries developed guns, germs, and steel and other countries did not.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Evil white men make the world a better place for everyone
Comment: This poor pampered professor while struggling at his work strolling along a beach in New Guinea is posed the question as to why Eurasian cultures have succeeded with technological developments but others haven't. IN over 300 pages he struggles to present an answer that could be presented in one sentence.
Its their BRAINS - they are wired differently
This is not racist. Its clear there are many physiological differences amongst various races. Eurasians for whatever reason are compelled to invent technology. One could certainly argue that Africans have a superior rhythm center in their brain.
The fact of the matter is the laws of physics are not relative. They work the same for everyone - nothing is stopping a non Eurasian from inventing something new based upon the fundamental and consistent laws of physics.
Like most professors he is woefully out of touch with the common person. All he need to is spend an hour in a gear head shop to understand the driving force in the Eurasian mind to tinker with technology. Of course then you cant sell a book - I returned mine immediately and asked for a refund - RUBBISH
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but repetitive
Comment: I won't give a synopsis of the book as there are plenty of other good reviews that cover that. I'll just say I found this book to have a fascinating and compelling argument for why history has gone the way it has. I did not find it to be racist or even biased as the author goes to great lengths to explain his every viewpoint and provides plenty of valid reasons against any kind of bias.
The biggest flaw of the book, in my mind at least, is that it is terribly repetitive. Diamond repeats the same points and conclusions many times. It gets to the point where you feel that entire pages could have been cut out and the book would have lost nothing. Aside from that however, it is an entertaining and informative read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: European Advantages
Comment: Professor Diamond takes up a very difficult question that spans centuries. He sets out to figure out why the Europeans were able to succeed not only in their enviornment, but control throughout the world.
Geography is something Diamond finds as a major factor. Geographic luck was able to determine that type of crops, and the conditions.
Diamond concludes that once the societies discovered how to produce enough food for themselves, then some of the other citizens were able to use their free time to advance other areas. This created specialists which resulted in the innovations of Guns and Steel. The germ advantage was because the Europeans lived with pigs.
Domestic animals (Diamond finds 14 thorughout history) most of them centered in Europe gave the major advantage against disease.
Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is an outstanding and interesting book to read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Why some societies advance faster than others.
Comment: It comes down to farming. Whoever farms first wins. Whichever society can not have to worry about what they are going to eat every day has the time to devote to innovation. The author's theory on a society's proximity to the equator does have some merit. I would have liked to have seen more discussion on how a society can hold itself back, such as Chinese rulers who burned their ships and stopped trade.
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.
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