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Title: Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond ISBN: 0-393-97386-7 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: July, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.05

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: interesting theory - difficult to read
Comment: In July 1972, Author Jared Diamond, was walking along
a beach on a tropic island of New Guinea, where as a
biologist he studied bird evolution. By chance, he
ran into a local politician, named Yali, who was
working to liberate what was then Papa New Guinea from
the Australia government. After hours of
conversation, Yali posed the question, "Why is it that
you white people developed so much cargo (technology)
and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had
little cargo of our own?" Why did wealth and power
become distributed as they are now, rather than in
some other way? Diamond was troubled that he did not
have an adequate response to Yali's Question. Fast
forward 25 years -- Diamond writes a 425 page answer.

The most common explanation to this question involves
implicit or explicit assumptions based on biological
inequalities. Usually these racial explanations are
cast in some sort of Darwinian argument where
causality is often left in question. Diamond thesis
attempts to refute these theories with an alternate
theory. Relying on a combination of history,
archeology, and microbiology, and genetics, Diamond
suggests that the most striking differences between
the long-term histories of different cultures have
been due not to innate differences in peoples
themselves but to differences in their environments.
These environmental factors include: continental
differences in the wild plant and animal species
available as starting materials for domestication;
environmental factors affecting rates of diffusion and
migration; and continental differences in area or
total population sizes. Diamond believes that these
geographical inequalities set different civilizations
on pre-determined trajectories to develop political
organization, technological advancements, and immunity
to disease that allowed them to encounter and conquer
other civilizations.
A cultural historian in a past life, I get all excited
about this sort of thing.

As one can imagine, trying to explain the history of
civilization in one volume is an arduous task.
Diamond chooses to explain his theory in broad strokes
then uses natural experiments at distinct points in
history to demonstrate how his ideas play out. This
is a general problem with all meta-histories.
Historical methods teach us that it is virtually
impossible to forge a bulletproof argument without
delving into the minutia. But when focusing on the

"big picture" issues, there is just too much
information to cover. Diamond does a very good job
managing this balance. He begins by outlining his
methods and follows through on his explanation with
dedication and accomplishment. He goes into just
about the right amount of detail on every subject and
infuses the traditional historical approach with a
healthy dose of scientific discovery. The chapters
concerning the domestication of plants and large
animals are a joy to read. While speaking on the
familiar new world conquest, Diamond is balanced in
the application of his detailed examples to forward
his theories. Notably, Diamond uses Australia and the
south pacific to demonstrate the dissemination of
technology and China to discuss the application of
unified language and political entities. In fact,
with my American History background, I was more
partial to the Euro centric examples.

So what's bad about the book? One of my pet peeves
involves arguing by anecdotal evidence and I cringed
every time Diamond brought up some story about a
bushman to illustrate his point. But this was a minor
annoyance. Another problem is Diamond's paucity of
footnotes. There were several portions of prose that
I felt should have been annotated with further
discussion and evidence. I should also warn you that
this book is a little dense. Be prepared for a 20
page discussion about the cross pollination of
language. It's a good idea to remember that I've got
a degree in this stuff. Back when I was younger,
smarter, and more exciting, I used to pour through
thousands of pages of this garbage every week. Beaten
into submission by a desk job and dearth of ...
pitchers of beer, I found the last 100 pages of Guns,
Germs, and Steel difficult to get through

So if you are up for the challenge, "Guns, Germs, and
Steel" is a insightful and rewarding book. For me, it
was probably a good substitute for chasing women and
the cultural/political theories almost kept me warm at
night. All joking aside, I guarantee that this book
will change the way you think about European conquest.

Rating: 5
Summary: A truly monumental book - A Must Read!
Comment: This is one of the few books to actually transcend its nominal domain (comparative anthropology?) to truly extend the broad scope of human understanding. If everyone would read and assimilate the wisdom in this book, human consciousness would take a quantuum leap. Why do I maintain this?
Because Prof. Diamond convincingly shows how technological innovation and the dominance of some cultures over others is not rooted in the inherent superiority of any nation, culture, race or people, but rather is the perhaps inevitable result of the orientation of our planet's land masses, the parallel evolution of microbes and man, and the very nature of cultural change. This is big stuff, and nowhere have the tired old (but still distressingly overused!) canards of social darwinism, racism, ethnocentrism and a host of other intellectual diseases been more thoroughly--(conclusively)--refuted than in this truly monumental book. I don't care how many PhDs you have or how smart you think you are: If you haven't read this book there are quite a few things you don't know yet.

Rating: 3
Summary: Not bad
Comment: Okay, so I was asked by my teacher to write a review on Guns, Germs and Steel. It is a pretty decent book and not very hard to read. While I have yet to get all of the way through it, Diamond raises some very thought provoking questions. i would recommend this book for and anthropology student!:)